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24.9.12

Stephan Guyenet must be one of the least insightful individuals alive. Not only does he spend all his time researching obesity, with a homer simpson-esque level of insight and accuracy, but here he hilariously accuses Gary Taubes of being "very attached to his ideas". Sure, Gary Taubes believes carbohydrate is influential in the obesity epidemic. This is no more biased, subjective, or false than Guyenet's foolish "food reward" hypothesis. If Taubes is biased, it isn't to a significant degree greater than Stephan Guyenet.

I'm really tired of the hypocrisy here... and they just keep getting away with it, no one ever calls them out. Could you imagine if Taubes accused Guyenet of being "attached to his hypothesis" as a primary criticism? This is an idiotic statement, of COURSE he's attached to his hypothesis, just as much as Guyenet is to his. We always think we are right, we are not going to believe in something we think is wrong otherwise we would stop believing in it/promoting it.

It just goes to demonstrate the pathetic levels of insight these people have... the fatal flaw in how they operate. Guyenet really is under this delusion that he is a scientist and completely objective evidence lead him to his beliefs, even though his emotional biases toward bland unpalatable dull foods, fear of hedonism/novelty are evident to any non autistic person reading his writing. It's super clear he has an emotional quasi religious vested interest in this food purity thing....and really it's *nothing* new, it's been done already many decades ago, hand wringing and fretting over morality played out with food. The difference is back then bland wheat products (crackers/cereals) were the vehicle to shame people for food pleasure, now we're using boiled potatoes to be consistent with "paleo" whatever that means.

And here Guyenet is joined by paleo superfan Melissa McEwen as they WWF style tag-team the "any hypothesis but CICO" one of obesity. PS, I swearz PALEOLAND becomes more and more like the WWF every day, with the drama and camped up personalities and storyline conflicts and alliances. I think all of these people should settle their differences in a fashion suitable for rednecks and 7 year old boys... by pretending to fight in a ring while wearing ridiculous costumes and talking a lot of smack.
We can even raise money for the NuSi in the process!! My money would be on Jack Kruse, he has biohazard to deploy at whim to bring opponents to instant submission.

I actually have character personalities and storylines for all of them! Maybe one day I'll post that... the paleoland wrestling federation. I LIKE IT, maybe Dada can lend me $$$ for my business startup???

Anyway, yea. In typical uninsightful Guynet (and apparently McEwen) fashion, we jump to conclusions that should never be jumped, ignoring all the other possibilities in the process...vroom vroom GETOUTTAMYWAY I HAVE A BIAS TO PROVE!!

No one argues that calories are a prerequisite for most forms of obesity to manifest. We merely argue that calories are passive in this process, which is primarily an endocrine and/or nervous system disorder. Very few people who are taken seriously would argue that calories are irrelevant to body mass.The insulin hypothesis states that the primary factor is endocrine dynamics, notably excessive/inappropriate insulin signalling (this may or may not be a downstream effect of some other nervous system or endocrine abnormality).The carbohydrate/insulin hypothesis states carbohydrate levels of the diet powerfully modulate that previously described endocrine/nervous system insulin disorder (which again may or may not be downstream a more primary disorder).

Nowhere is it stated you can gargle with bacon grease and sit like a cartoon glutton and become thin and trim. Perhaps some people believe this, but this is irrelevant to the real issue which is that obesity is an endocrine / nervous system disorder which sometimes responds to dietary carbohydrate manipulation as a way to control that endocrine disorder.

The fact starving people fail to become obese does not disprove this at all, as starvation prevents hyperinsulinemia even in the context of a carbohydrate base. If you look at insulin levels of calorie restricted people, they are IN THE BASEMENT. When a person is starving of adequate caloric energy they are constantly in a catabolic state most of the day, breaking down proteins and fats for energy, necessitating very low insulin levels. Carbohydrate is just one of many factors that affect insulin levels and obesity proneness... only an ignorant fool would argue obesity is a function of carbohydrate alone, everything about our lifestyle promotes this illness. The argument made by the CIH is that manipulating carbohydrate is a simple effective therapy to quickly and powerfully control the disorder. I am living proof it works at least for a subset of obesities.

I would point out Guyenet's argument here is about as valid as saying that calories affect height and body size in general, because starving populations will see growth stunting, low birth weight infants, and a tendency to dimunive stature particularly if protein starved. No one would EVER make such an assinine argument because it's obvious teh caloric and protein restriction results in pathologically low IGF-1 (an ENDOCRINE signal) which causes stunted growth, the entire body becomes diminutive and heights are blunted, infants are born small and weak. This is the polar opposite of what we observe today with our rocket high protein levels, screaming soaring insulin during gestation... we see behemoth sized humans bathing in IGF-1, born 11 pounds at birth, requiring a cesarean section to be safely delivered, growing to extreme heights and weights...not just in body fat, but the entire structure of the body is oversized, like a mild form of acromegaly.

Yes, if you examine the growth of starving populations, they will shrink and infants are born small and weak, but like I said, this is not EVIDENCE AGAINST the endocrine nature of growth, it only provides evidence that calories are a necessary substrate, ingredient, to trigger and facilitate maximal growth. If I throw fishfood flakes on my goldfish, his simple endocrine system will respond to the energy and carbohydrate and cause him to grow to the size of his tank. Remember that goldfish we won at the state fair, fed it on carbohydrate flakes, and it eventually could barely move in the bowl because it kept growing? Sans endocrine stimulation from our carbohydrate based fish food, this would fail to occur. If I don't feed my pet goldfish, this isn't evidence against the endocrine nature of his growth.

Similarly, if a population starves and obesity fails to be triggered, this doesn't mean LOLFATSO JUST EAT LESS YOU R 2 FATS, i.e. "calories in / calories out" is all there is to it. It is possible for obesity to be both an endocrine disease, and for calories to be a necessary prerequisite for it to manifest.

Simple question. Why do some people end up like myself, rapidly gaining weight in late childhood/early puberty eventually becoming extremely morbidly obese before adulthood? If calories being excessive were all there is to it, why doesn't everyone end up at least slightly fat, if not obese? Why are people my size so rare, particularly in childhood?

I simply reject the idea that food tastes really good so I over ate. I reject the idea I am addicted to food, or that food addiction caused my obesity. Obesity is an endocrine / nervous system disorder. Excessive calories and food obsession are downstream symptoms. If I was starved during childhood I never would have become obese but it doesn't change the fact I have a vulnerability to develop this disorder in the environment I live in.

PS, it's convenient McEwen and Guyenet selectively ignore the fact that rates of obesity EXPLODE when societies recover from famines. If obesity wasn't an endocrine/nervous system disorder, why would we be any fatter during adulthood, growing as a fetus inside a starving mother? Sure, people lose weight when starved, but why do their offspring process nutrition in a *completely * different way if it was all a matter of flavorful food and calories and not the endocrine/nervous system responding to food differently?

192 comments:

Now that Taubes is at the helm of his own research institute the starch squad must feel like they're being burned alive.
[Particularly an institute that's apparently funded with hedge fund-level resources with the likes of Tim Ferris & Nicholas Taleb (!) on its advisory board.]
The starch squad's math has been "I have a blog; Taubes has a blog; therefore I = Taubes." Um, no.
It will take years, but Taubes et al are finally in a place where they have a good shot at ending the idiocy of the Walter Willett/Jane Brody/USDA/Big Grain/Big Sugar/Diabetes $$$ Turd of Evil.
Taubes and Attia are right -- the bickering about what to eat has lasted CENTURIES. Walking past good food to eat bad food is the West's #1 public health problem. And it's time to end it, once and for all, the way Bill Gates has almost wiped the polio virus from the face of the earth.
I LOVE that Attia & Taubes have set out to solve a problem this big -- because it's not a problem the Guyenets of the world are really interested in. The Guyenets are interested in tenure, funding, and followers won by arguments cherry-picked from rat studies. Guyenet CAN'T solve the real problem; he doesn't have the ammunition and has no intention of getting it. All Guyenet is planning to do, for the next forty years of his life, is extrapolate from rodents. His life is about looking for his keys under the streetlight, not where he lost them. But Taubes and Attia are looking to obsolete the Guyenets completely by testing what diet makes ACTUAL PEOPLE healthy.
And once they have, the sputterings of the Willetts and Guyenets won't amount to shit.
For a long time, I've felt that Taubes "made" Guyenet -- at least in the eyes of bloggers that had never been to a medical conference -- and thus thought Taubes was a Meanie.
Wouldn't it be funny if Guyenet had inadvertently given birth to NuSi, by making Taubes realize that the centuries of bullshit would never end without an effort unlike any humanity had ever attempted?
If I'm right about Taubes' & Attia's ultimate goal, it's like the Apollo project. Except it's more important.
Again, it will take a long time...but it can't happen soon enough.

Thanks, uh, I think, for pointing to TGD. I needed something to make me sleepy-irritated. Super-good for cortisol.
By the way, that Sanjeev...so aggressively stupid. I think CS and TGD comments sections might be tolerable without that db. What a yappy little puppy.

Lol, I love your take on the subject.
I also love how Tom Naughton spanked Carbsane this week in his comments, hilarious.
On sept 12th
CS:Still waiting on that promised statement on Jack Kruse from ole Jimbo, by the way. He’s probably too preoccupied with frisbee golf… ;)
TN:Well, you finally convinced me. I’ll call Jimmy immediately and tell him we’re no longer friends because he hasn’t commented on Jack Kruse.
Thank you very much for your stalker-like persistence in getting through to me. I told you the purpose of this blog isn’t to provide a forum for Jimmy-haters, I tried blocking you several times, I ignored your attempts to get through to me on the YouTube channel. I couldn’t have made it any more obvious that I’m really not interested in hearing any more buzzes from that bee up your butt about Jimmy and Jack Kruse … But by gosh, you had the guts and determination to say to yourself, “No! I don’t care how many times he tries to make me go away! I must persevere because THE WORLD NEEDS TO HEAR MY OPINION OF JIMMY MOORE AND HIS FAILURE TO SHARE MY HATRED OF JACK KRUSE! THAT OPINION WILL BE HEARD, NO MATTER HOW MANY TIMES I NEED TO SWITCH MY IP ADDRESS TO GET THROUGH!”
Get some professional help. This is not how mentally healthy people behave. All you’re doing is proving that your screen name was intended to be ironic.
On the 13th
CS: Jimmy’s a tool and you’re not much better. This kind of devaluing – and co-opting – of the ‘paleo’ name is why people like Dr. Kurt Harris want nothing to do with it now.
TN: Like I said, go get the professional help you so obviously need. Anyone who is so obsessed with me and Jimmy as to continue finding ways around being blocked just to leave yet another dumb-ass comment nobody who reads this blog will take seriously isn’t mentally balanced. I don’t expect you to grasp that, of course, because mentally unbalanced types never believe they’re mentally unbalanced. It’s everyone else who is the problem, ya see. Stalkers never look in the mirror and say “Holy crap, I’m a stalker!” They’re always 100% convinced the stalking is justified and they’re the ones being wronged.
You’re a stalker. You’re not well. You have issues, big ones. Go see a shrink.

Nice find gallier. But I can't even laugh about it, it's sad and actually creepy. Carbsane really is a stalker. Like some sort of crazy exgirlfriend that won't leave you alone and never stops obsessing about you.
On topic: What can I say Woo, I agree wholeheartedly. SG simply is another one of the "obesity researchers" and nutritionists that have been spewing crap for decades now. They have to come from somewhere.

right again, Wooo -- don't you get tired of hitting the nail on the head ALL the time? ;-)
@Anon, amen to your comment, too!
AND @Galier, i had no idea she was that far beyond-the-pale; i miss so much by staying away from the blogs and comments of the extremists....

Woo, thank you for this and other cathartic posts like this. Why are you one of the lone voices in this madness people annoyingly call the "paleosphere" or "low-carb-o-sphere" or whatever the f who ACTUALLY PROCESSES AND UNDERSTANDS these concepts??
I'm grateful b/c sometimes I feel like a lone nut, and sometimes I feel tempted to lash out against the CICO kids in a Woo-styled rant myself.
Using the fact that the Kitavans or Okinawans can eat rice and potatoes and not get obese for the purpose of attacking a ridiculously cartoonish incarnation of the carbs-insulin hypothesis is insane enough.
Doing so, and then assuming that by "destroying" the CIH, you've suddenly re-validated CICO is so fraught with logical bogusness that I want to throw my computer out the window and move to a shed in Montana. Just thinking that this has become an internet "meme" among people who should know better makes me throw up in my mouth a little.
If you want to know why asshats like Ancel Keys were allowed to wean Americans off of dangerous saturated fats and onto low fat heart healthy corn syrup, look no further than "memes" like the aforementioned idea flooding the paleosphere.
The fat-is-bad-sugar-is-fine type thinking is just a macrocosmic example of the same toodly-doo illogical thinking that the paleo CICO crowd routinely engages in.
Just wrote about this myself yesterday, btw: http://www.caloriegate.com/carbs-insulin-hypothesis/why-does-eat-less-move-more-persist-even-among-people-who-should-know-better

Well, this is interesting. All the sudden, some guy goes from being an "independent science writer" to Daddy Warbucks for obesity researchers. It is a gracious move to stop the sniping and hold out the olive branch, even if it is only a little twig.

@Gallier,
I remember an episode when somebody posted something intentionally provocative on the Hyperlipid blog under the name CarbSanity (or similar) who was not actually the Evelyn aka Carbsane. It is quite possible it is not her on the Tom's blog. She uses the name Carbsane.

Woooooo,I feel that anyone who has an opinion as to what constitutes the healthy human diet is extremely biased.taubes and Attia opened up NUSI foundation with members from every diet cult out there.The reason is that they want as many ideas to test out and try to come to a conclusion to the optimal diet.
As for me,I have a new theory that hit me a few days ago after reading about Moore's nutritional ketosis experiments.This theory scares me and it just very well could be fact.See,we eat carbs for decades and get carb burnout where our bodies just don't respond well to it.Whats scary is that many low carbers and myself got amazing results with LC eating a decade ago but many of us find it just doesn't work as well after awhile of eating LC.See the pattern?
Now take Dr.Attia(who I admire for his idea to take people from all diet styles onto the team)who ate low fat for the longest time until he burnt out on it.Now he shifted to complete ketogenic and is getting amazing results.....but will this be in 10 yrs time?
We have insulin resistance from too much insulin secretion overtime,can we somehow get a resistance to LC eating?I mean just look at how people are having to go lower and lower in protein and up the fat.Is this an issue where it just gets worse and worse?I remember my Ex GF who ate low fat for yrs went on my Atkins diet and was the deepest purple on the keto sticks at all times.Whats crazy is that she admited to me that she was cheating with bread here and there.
Just an idea that has been stirring with me lately,and I know will get shot down as all my ideas do in the internet nutrition dimension.

Formerly famine stricken populations are fascinating studies, I agree! This is being seen in former soviet bloc nations and I keep hoping some researchers are looking into this as more than just increased wealth = more palatable food/greater access to nutrition = FAT. That ignores all the biochemical triggers for appetite and satiety and someone besides you has to see this.
As for paleo wrestling federation, I might just tune in for that ;)

I guess that carbsane to-do with naughton was a put-on. Well, Teh Real CarbSane - we know you're reading!, maybe, just maybe, the reason Tom fell for it is because it was a pitch-perfect parody.
You're a shit writer, Evelyn. Your freakin' smileys, joke after joke landing in the sandtraps or water hazards -- it's just more shit than shit, roof to basement. You think Big Bang Theory is funny and has levels. Wow, just wow. The only reason you love Big Bang Theory is because Ow, My Balls hasn't been invented yet.

@Anon I loved this comment! So much eloquent truth.
To give Guyenet his due, he was a big man around town even before he got into fisticuffs with Taubes. He was always stupid even back then (when he was obsessed with hating wheat and loving coconuts) but at least you could credit him for trying to think in the early days of WHS. I never agreed with Guyenet, not even when he sorta believed insulin promoted obesity. His line of reasoning always struck me as facile, uninsightful, his conclusions overzealous and irrational. "If these people eat coconuts and are thin I guess that means coconuts prevent obesity". LOLWUT. True talk, this is how he thinks. He might decide he was wrong later but it's just so embarrassingly face-palmy to ever have uttered the stupidity in the first place.
@dillyjomo YERWELCOME, i like to spread the rawring of teh drama lion... drama is king of the internet jungle! Drama makes the world go round, not physical laws of the universe.
AGRESSIVELY STUPID. OMG that is exactly sanjeev! I love this phrase I might steal it.
@gallier apparently this was a CS troll; carbsane usually takes pride in her antagonism and doesn't post anonymously, or at least I've never seen her caught out doing so. Carbsane's MO is to either ignore the person entirely (if they aren't important) or to harass them publically and often on her blog and sometimes on their websites. McEwen on the other hand is fond of marionetteing backstage sight unseen.
I do agree carbsanity is probably ELMM. The ELMM troll is a strange one... he shmoozes up with Nikoley but goes around cheerleading for carbsane even though she and melissa can't stand him. He's slightly more stable than Razwell.
@Purposelessness /agree re: SG. He's just so generic and doomed to mediocrity unfortunately...but so are most of us, the difference is we don't post and posture a lot of pomp about how revolutionary and important we are.
FACT: If as a researcher your ideas line up 100% with the status quo and the old guard, this is true... you are not important, you are uninsightful, and you will never do anything even slightly remarkable professionally speaking.
@TJ Oh teh drama has been fruitful this season, eh.
@tess I wish I could take credit. In a sea of ridiculous comical stupidity, possessing a mouth/pair of hands/keyboard is all that's required to make a good point or two every now and then ;D.
@S LOL.
@Adam I suggest not ranting in a woo-style manner if you are trying to influence people. I'm perfectly fine with the fact they all think I am an irrelevant abrasive nut so I let it all hang out!

@EB Taubes is confident he is right, or at least he is confident better research is the key. The research is terrible, the reasoning/insight is embarrassing. See the most recent post on WHS describing starvation as a "natural experiment" of whether or not calorie excess causes obesity. This is where we are in 2012.
@Wolfstriked Well I think the issues with long term failure of LC to "work anymore" is due to a combination of reasons, most of them are unavoidable on any diet (e.g. aging/weight reduced states) or they are entirely psychological.
I don't think many will find people who say low carb "stopped working" who didn't exhibit this pattern of crash dieting on chicken breasts, alternating with binging on "treat days" or otherwise eating crap as a reprieve from their deprivation yukko diet that also makes them feel like trash.
My foods are DELISH, I only eat a moderately ketogenic diet every day, and look at that low carb still magically "works" for me after 10 years. Absent from my practice is crash dieting or trying to somehow "avoid" food while losing weight, as if the solution to a weight problem is temporarily pretending we don't have to eat at all. Now I'm not against losing weight quickly or restricting food but only if this is done int he context of a long term goal to totally redefine how one eats and finding NEW FOODS that are enjoyable/craved.
Anyway, the point is, I don't think the issue with low carb diet is "extreme resistance", and Jimmy Moore is a classic fad dieter. He's not as bad as some others but definitely he does this thing where he eats crappy and then places himself on some strict unrealistic unsustainable eating program to make ammends. That's crash dieting.
@dillyjom Occsionally at work I'll peep a few epis of big bang theory, people seem to like this shit for some unknown reason. Holy awful TV. No wonder I simply never ever watch TV in spite of paying for cable like a sucker.
First of all the main geek reads to me more "sensitive gay man" than he does a geek, anyway. If it wasn't for the scripted lines of esoteric geek babble I would never peg him as a nerd or a geek, he seems more like an emotional type or an artist in his demeanor.
And the indian geek is SUPER racist, and their female friend is SUPER sexist. LOL GIRLS CAN'T BE GEEKS GIRLS ARE DECORATIONS, STUPID, THEY ARE THERE TO BE BLONDE AND WEAR REVEALING CLOTHING not to think or talk, I know this because the big bang theory told me so.
Besides, everyone knows it's funny when indians have accents and dont' always understand everything about america, because their brown people foreign culture is inferior to our american christian fatass one. God loves america, thats why I'm off work on christmas and not 8 arm hindu god day, duh! And the jewish geek is also not at all a racial/ethnic stereotype, nope.
Good old big bang theory, it's like "that 70s show" only TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE IN EVERY FUCKING WAY. At least that 70s show was endearing in a wonder years vein. And at least the jokes were funny sometimes.
To borrow a phrase from hyperlipid, I NEED MY ONDANSETRON STAT.

I still agree with the LC world that calories do not CAUSE obesity (but an excess is absolutely necessary for it to occur), however I'm no longer a believer in the insulin hypothesis. If you read Chapter 1 of Anthony Colpo's Fat Loss Bible, he analyzes around two dozen metabolic ward studies which irrefutably come up with the conclusion that weight loss is completely determined by calories, and that carbohydrates and insulin levels do not affect fat metabolism in any meaningful way in this regard.
This completely destroys Taubes' argument that people can lose weight just by reducing carbohydrates and replacing it with fat. And please don't try to say that Taubes never said that because he did, I read GCBC from cover to cover and he states that obese people can eat less calories than lean counterparts and remain obese if they are intolerant to carbs. This has been completely disproven yet Taubes and the community fail to acknowledge it.
Everybody on Jimmy's board has willingly ignored all the metabolic ward studies that disprove CIH. I believe LC has become cult-like in many ways because people are ignoring evidence against it and are just as bad as the low fat community.
And finally I want to re-emphasize that I do not believe calories cause obesity, I believe that some other factors cause us to over-consume calories, but insulin is not likely to be the main culprit.

And let me elaborate as to why I don't trust Taubes. Taubes is quick to point out bad science, but his entire theory is built on bad science and anecdotes. He talks about the obese woman with a starving baby, but if put in a metabolic ward, you would see that this woman does in fact over-consume calories to reach such weight status. It has to be the case because no metabolic ward in the history of science has demonstrated people remaining obese while cutting calories significantly. He uses this in his lecture as proof that calories don't matter. Then there is his evidence that exercise doesn't affect weight loss, that the AHA said the "evidence isn't particularly compelling". Where is the scientific rigor that backs up these claims? Taubes also believes that researchers knew more 50-100 years ago then they do today. Ludicrous. Let's face it, Taubes is in over his head with understanding fat metabolism and believes what he believes based on mostly blind faith.

re: "Dave"
Woo, how awesome is it that you now have sock-puppets slagging Taubes on your blog!
Remember when nobody came? Remember when nobody gave a shit what you thought? Now everyone's like, "Woo, be my friend -- hate my enemy, woncha pleeeeze?" LOL
The Taubes-bashing sure has a different feel now that Taubes is perched atop a pile of hedge fund bucks. Suddenly... Guyenet's on board. Just a moment while I HAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAH
And I bet "Dave" is ELMM.

Anon: I don't know who or what Dave is but I have noticed that it only ever shows up here to slam Taubes which also makes me think it's someone else's sock puppet.
Taubes and Attia are da shit. They're unusually intelligent and insightful and, most importantly, they now have TEH MONEYZ to test their ideas. Guyenet's flailing post was fucking pathetic. Passive aggressive bitching unbecoming of a 13-year-old schoolgirl. His constant sycophantic appeals to "senior obesity researches", does he even realise how stupid and slavish he sounds? One tightly-controlled metabolic ward study from NuSI will answer more questions pertinent to the human obesity problem than all the rat studies put together. Scary times for Guyenet and his ilk.

I wanna see lotsa "boaring" studies, once the ratties & teh mices hab shown de way.
In addition, plenty ob treadmeal used to get data on de EATs.
Then lets have US humans locked away in Kitava, Northern Greenland and Kenyan MasaiLand eatin' Real Paleo stuff.
Yeah, and the hymn title is "Juicy NuSI" to the air of "Stupid Cupid"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTF3ggSaUGI
Slainte

According to Dave, no farther research is necessary because the world knows all answers from the already completed studies and Anthony Colpo did the adequate summery in his book.
Still LC world together with diabetic patients "willingly ignored all the metabolic ward studies that disprove CIH". It is so sad.

@Dave
Your reasoning comits several common errors.
#1 Confusing metabolic rate with body fatness/weight gain.
Colpo beats his chest screaming 'METABOLIC WAAAARD STUDIIIIEAAAAS SHOW A CALORIE IS A CALORIE!!!!" but this logic is grossly ignorant of physiology. Rate of metabolism, how much energy is used for metabolic processes, is not the determinent of body fatness. I wrote a rant about this several weeks ago if you peruse the tags. Lets give Colpo and you the benefit of doubt and agree there is no RMR difference between a high carb or low carb diet. Lets even go wild and say this remains true for obese people and diabetics.
Even if we accept that to be true this statement has NOTHING to do with predicting whether the low or high carb diet promotes a body composition of fatness.
Here's an example of why this is a meaningless argument. A woman who becomes pregnant will see a dramatic increase in her metabolic rate, but the endocrine dynamics of her body lead to high blood glucose, an increase in body fatness, as well as building a fetus in her uterus.
Even a non-pregnant female who is exposed to high progesterone during the luteal phase will see an increase in her metabolic rate, but many if not most women also gain small amount of body fat at this time and have a deterioration of blood glucose control, as is documented in studies. One lolworthy conclusion was women should eat less during the luteal phase because they have an opportunity to lose weight! It's like these morons are incapable of seeing that something can increase metabolism and also increase body fat just as logically.
Cortisol can also can increase the metabolic rate, but the endocrine impact of cortisol is to destroy lean tissue and bias the body to build fat and promote diabetes.
Growth hormone excess increases the metabolic rate in the thousands, but people with growth hormone excess do not waste their body fat tissue...they tend to gain fat if any chagne at all, they merely grow tremendously and abnormally in all body structures.
When examining the metabolic rate, it's *meaningless* to say "faster metabolism = thinner", because we are not like car engines that have a simple relationship between energy and work. The energy we use can be applied in a multitude of ways with very dramatically different outcomes...as different as being thin and wirey/hyperactive, or being fat and sluggish, or being pregnant, or growing 8 feet tall. All of these people very well could have the same metabolic rate.
#2 Whats true for most is not true for all. Every rule has exceptions.
Regarding the woman and her starving child...it is FALSE that all obese people have high metabolic rates. Some actually do have abnormally low metabolic rates, and the pima / native people prone to obesity typically do have lower metabolic rates in the context of obesity, which may be a genetically/evolutionarily conserved form of thriftiness.
Dave you seem to be making a lot of silly reasoning errors, rather similar to McEwen Guyenet Harris et al. My advice: think outside the box.

Example:
I had my RMR measured during the leptin study.
At the time of testing I was eating about 1600 calories per day, 60 carbs per day, and I weighed less than I do now.
My RQ (respiratory quotient) after an 8 hour fast was ~0.7, which suggests my body is ketotic and entirely oxidizing fat for energy.
My RMR was barely 1100 calories, which is markedly lower than expected.
These two findings together tell me and the researchers that my metabolic rate is very low but I am using almost entirely my body fat for energy.
My body composition at the time was quite thin with ribs visible, no one would ever call me fat.
Here we provide an example of low metabolic rate, on a very low carb diet, promoting VERY THIN body type.
Now, if I got a bag of potatoes and started gorging, particularly if I added some fat to the mix, my insulin/thyroid/leptin would increase, my sympathetic nervous system would also increase secondary to these, and my metabolic rate would increase A LOT. If, after several days of this gorging, I had my metabolic test repeated we would probably observe my RMR to be higher than predicted, or at least average, and we would observe my RQ to be abnormally high, suggesting my body is not oxidizing body fat normally in a fasted state. This is because I am not oxidizing glucose normally, due to obesity history and weight reduced status.
I would gain weight rapidly from the endocrine dynamics in my particular vulnerable body, combined with the dietary energy to facilitate body fat growth.
I myself am a living example of rate of metabolism FAILING to predict body fatness. I will be absolutely thinnest when my metabolism is slowest, I will be absolutely fattest with my metabolism is fastest. Most people, actually, are in a similar camp. The only exception to this rule is taking / abusing drugs or hormones capable of increasing metabolism in a fashion specifically designed to waste body fat: thyroid, sympathomemetics/catecholamines (e.g. coffee, speed, meth), androgens, etc.

Some of you prove my point. You are incapable of having a mind for yourselves and only appeal to authorities who tell you what you want to hear. I've read GCBC, I've read Lyle Mcdonald's Ketogentic diet, I've read Colpo's Fat loss bible, I've read both "art and science of LC" books, and of course many online resources. I've come to my beliefs based on careful consideration of both sides. So you can insult me or tell me why I'm wrong.

@Woo I think that body fat is determined mainly by our consumption of calories and that metbaolic rate doesn't vary as much as many people like to believe, and that our eating is mainly controlled by the body as opposed to being behavioral like many CICOs think.
The problem I have is blind faith in insulin as the culprit based on little more than observations not backed up by any science. Taubes uses the USDA data on increases in carb intake as evidence, which makes him a hypocrite when he criticizes people for using observational studies as evidence.
We all know both carbs and calories increased, but still it is a leap of faith to say the carbs caused the increased calorie intake.
I also find it hypocritical that bloggers and commenters will insult people for simply having an opposing view. I don't know who people think I am, but I've posted positively in the past here when I was more of a believer.

Here is a better hypothesis of obesity than insulin IMO that someone posted on the WHS comments.
http://www.dovepress.com/comparison-with-ancestral-diets-suggests-dense-acellular-carbohydrates-peer-reviewed-article-DMSO

This paper has been making the rounds for a while now. It's simply a restatement of the CIH in fancier language. GCBC clearly states that refined carbs are what's causing obesity and disease. I don't think Taubes ever argued that root vegetables and fruit are going to kill you UNLESS you already have a damaged metabolism from sugar and flour. He argues and I agree with him 100% based on my personal experience that once you're fat and sick even these otherwise harmless paleo carbs become a problem. Why this is so hard for people to grasp I don't know.

No Taubes is saying that its because of insulin storing and locking away fat that it causes obesity. Taubes believes that a low carb diet allows people to eat the same amount of calories and lose weight which is complete nonsense as metabolic ward studies demonstrate.

Oh look, the goalposts just moved.
"Dave", why don't you just fess up like Kinbrum once did when he admitted that he couldn't actually be arsed to read GCBC which he was so vehemently criticising online? I get it, it's long and boring, and it certainly exceeds the attention span of goldfish like you but you are actually being really annoying now. I have my copy of GCBC here and I am going to quote directly from it to settle this stupid nonargument about what Taubes believes.
(pp. 453-454)
As I emerge from this research, though, certain conclusions seem inescapable to me, based on the existing knowledge:
1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease, or any other disease of civilization.
2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis--the entire harmonic ensamble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight, and well-being.
3. Sugars--sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically--are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates.
4. Through their direct effect on insulin and blood sugar, refined carbohydrates, starches, and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary cause of cancer, Alzheimer's disease, and the other chronic diseases of civilization.
And then there are literally hundreds of written and spoken interviews with the man available online for free in which he clearly blames the refined Western carbs and their action on insulin and the liver and where he concedes that paleo kids in their 20s who are lean and healthy can eat as many tubers as they want and stay lean as the disease and old age haven't set in yet hence they'll just burn the energy instead of storing it.
As for his beliefs about being able to eat as many LC calories as you want and still lose weight, well, I don't think you'll find much support for that kind of magical thinking around here. This is hardly a zero-carb hezbollah website. But the point you're missing, which is football pitch sized, believe me, is that whatever makes you fat in the first place may cause other otherwise harmless things which other lucky people can eat with impunity to become problematic for you. This is a commonly observed phenomenon in medicine.

Sorry but I don't see how anything I've said about Taubes is incorrect. And I have read GCBC like I stated already.
Taubes has openly challenged the idea that weight loss is a result of calorie reduction and suggests it could just as well be due to the carb reduction. This shows he believes weight loss can occur when carbs are reduced in a diet while calories remain constant. He refused to acknowledge that this is false and there is a mountain of scientific literature that verifies he is wrong.
While there is some truth in the idea that some carb foods are inherently bad, Taubes is completely wrong as to the underlying mechanism that makes the food bad.

@Wooo, apologies for this post in your comments.
@Dave,
as it happens I was just about to make a post on my blog about that paper you linked, I think the author has the "kind of" right hypothesis ( that it is carbohydrate density partly causing problems ) but I think he has the wrong conclusion that it is leptin resistance causing the problems. High leptin is a sign of high carb->fat pathway inside adipocytes.
What I think may be happening is a lack of GLP-1 secretion in response to carbohydrate that is causing the grief. This paper was key imo. Why is this important? Well because it is the job of the liver to absorb most of the dietary glucose you eat, only a small amount is suppose to hit circulation. (15% according to some )
You see, the liver takes up glucose via a concentration gradient through GLUT2, in order to maintain that concentration gradient so that the liver does actually take up the glucose, you need to activate glucokinase in the liver. Glucokinase phosphorylates glucose, this reduces the concentration of glucose in the liver cells allowing more glucose to flow into the liver. The more you can activate glucokinase, the more glucose your liver will handle, otherwise that glucose will hit circulation. The more glucose that hits circulation, the more insulin you secrete to deal with that glucose.
In one of Peter's post he mentions how portal vein insulin is suppose to activate glucokinase in the liver, but that new study proves the job also falls to GLP-1.
Both high carbohydrate density and lack of GLP-1 secretion will mean more glucose in circulation where it is taken up by adipocytes, and under the extra insulin, more of that glucose goes down the lipogenesis pathway, leading to greater leptin secretion.
High carbohydrate density means a higher mass flow rate of glucose in the portal vein, giving less time for glucokinase to do its job. In addition, a lack of GLP-1 will mean less glucokinase activated. Both of these things combined lead to what we call "hyperglycemia"
Anyway, this is my viewpoint. Flameshield up!

@Galina and to address your straw man, no I never suggested further research isn't needed. I'm just not convinced that the perception of insulin's role in the body based on 1960s textbooks is more accurate than what current researchers know. The whole insulin hypothesis assumes that researchers today are all highly bias and/or incompetent. Except of course all the LC researchers who are objective. We can't dismiss the last 100 years of studies as flawed except when they support the insulin hypothesis.
As an example, diet doctor has this list of studies showing more weight loss on LC than other diets, however I picked like 4 at random and saw they were all free living. None of the metabolic ward studies from Colpo's book were given any mention. Why not? Because Diet Doctor ignored them and found a way to rationalize them away as irrelevant.

@Dave
What about that recent Harvard study? (http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154) The critiques I saw were lame at best. Most focused on the slightly higher CRP in the LC group, while completely ignoring the fact that it was in the 'normal range'. Criticizers also failed, or were not educated enough, to point out the better PAI-1 markers on the LC diet (a better inflammatory marker than CRP.)
I thought the writeup by Colpo was a little embarrassing. You can't demand science-based results and then discount a statistical result because some of the constituents of said result didn't improve. That's the point of statistical calculations on the data. The rest of his cortisol nonsense was pure speculation/conjecture.
The LC diet wasn't even that LC, but the naysayers all tried to sweep that study under the rug quickly.

Personally I don't see why we are still researching LC vs. low fat, etc. I think that level of granularity is simply not enough to more forward. We need to do more research comparing gains and others of the alleged unhealthy carbs to other carbs and how thye affect health markers.

The Cuban example brought up by MacEwen and Guyenet is really just the talkback caller's old argument that everyone lost weight in the Nazi Death Camps, so it is possible, fat people, the Triumph of the Will and all that.
The logical argument against Taubes is that identifying the best cure isn't the same thing as finding the proximal cause. And sometimes it sounds like Gary Taubes has discovered the CAUSE of obesity.
But then, surely part of what causes obesity is in fact the ineffectiveness of the current remedial steps.
Few people get massive overnight, and a little fat isn't obesity. There's a point at which most people say "I should try to lose weight" and maybe the effectiveness of whatever they try determines whether they become obese; maybe it's not really such a deep hole till some idiot tells you to keep digging yourself out.
Nice summary of CIH Woo.

Ancel Keys already tried it in his year-long, total lock-down Minnesota Starvation Experiment.
The 24 week "Semi Starvation Period" was 1560 calories a day of very high carb: potatoes, rutabagas, turnips, bread and macaroni.
I'm not sure that 1,560 low-carb calories a day would be that horrific a diet, but a lot of the subjects went crazy on the diet Keys provided, including one who amputated three of his fingers.

2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis--the entire harmonic ensamble of the human body.-Taubes
I think my hyperglycemia may be caused by a deficiency of insulin (but not zero insulin as in a true Type 1 diabetic), not insulin excess as Taubes is implying. Jenny Ruhl posits that strong hunger is caused by quickly falling blood sugar levels. so before when i was eating lots of bread, rice, etc. my blood sugar shot way way up, and then when it started to fall, i had to eat again. at least every 2 hours. so i took in too many calories because that steep fall in blood sugar got me really hungry and i was fatter. now my blood sugar is more stable because i limit carbs so i don't get hungry. the key is keeping blood sugar stable whether you are pumping out tons of insulin or hardly any at all.

from an email from Jenny Ruhl to me:
"It isn't really all that important at this point what is causing your higher than normal blood sugars because your goal, no matter what the cause would be to lower them. The way to do that would be to start out cutting back on carbs and then move on to try metformin. If metformin didn't do anything significant for your blood sugar, you could assume you were insulin deficient. But even there, it's not an open and shut case. I'm insulin sensitive, but Metformin makes a small difference in my blood sugar but a huge difference in my appetite, so I find it very useful. Studies have found this to be true for people with Type 1, too."
Can Metformin's affect on appetite tell us anything about the causes of obesity, at least in a subset of people? What does Metformin do?

Metformin's primary effect is to control the gluconeogenesis in the liver through activating AMP-K. In Type-IIs, the IR can let the glucose produced by GNG to get out of control raising blood sugar to dangerous levels.
In another magical effect, I believe it also tends to increase insulin sensitivity (reduces IR) by 'fixing' some of the receptors.
Its suggested benefit to cancer, especially Steve Jobs cancer, lends support to the Warburg-based recommendations for a LC diet. I think its mechanism profile is fascinating in how close it compares to an extremely LC diet.
It's probably one of those few awesome drugs that works well and is well tolerated.

@ Anon, presumably the fingers were then braised and eaten with fava beans and a nice Chianti.
I wonder if Food Reward isn't all about the placebo effect: this rubbish pleases me, ergo I shall eat it till I burst.
If that's not the placebo effect, I don't know what is.

@Dave,
I got an impression that you thought that insulin role in obesity didn't need father investigations. Do you disregard the experience of medical professionals (good examples are Hyperlpid and Scribble-pad blogs) about the fattening effect of insulin ?

@Galina, My impression is that insulin having a causal role in obesity has already been thoroughly disproven by the current scientific literature based on weighing in what I've read in several books noted above, some supporting and some against this hypothesis, as well as all the interpretations from various researchers/bloggers on the web regarding the applicable studies.
In other words I've given the hypothesis a fair chance, but it no longer seems plausible to me and the LC community as a whole is clearly cherry-picking data and using logical fallacies to defend it.
And of course as someone who has been a low-carber for months and has an opposing view as to WHY the diet works, I was quickly attacked as being one of those CICO types which goes to show there is a type of religious zealotry going on in the community.
One thing that annoys me when I question the IH is people always are quick to throw the diabetes condition at me as if I'm against using LC diets for diabetes or something. Truth is I think LC is very good for diabetes, but the problem is I DON'T have diabetes, so why should I use a diabetes treatment plan to lose a mere 15 lbs? Why should I believe that my insulin metabolism is the same as a diabetic?
Oh and even though I'm no longer a believer that insulin causes obesity as wooo often writes about, that doesn't mean I don't find some of the other things she writes to be valuable or insightful.

@Dave,
People could have trouble eating carbs without being diabetics.Some register quite high blood sugar numbers and fluctuations in energy and hunger after eating even not-junk carbohydrates. They are not necessary diabetics or even fat. Recently a registered dietitian commented about such reaction on carbs on Wooo's blog. If you check the content of Wooo's blog, you will find out many reports of improved mental health on a LC diet.
I have other benefits from my diet besides loosing mere 32 lb - I stopped using asthma meds, I had no single flu or infection since I started it, I manage my neurological disorder, I don't have an uncontrollable hunger any longer. Because of my personal experience, I hope health benefits of lowering carbs will be better investigated.
It doesn't mean YUO have to eat a diet very low in carbohydrates in order to loose 15 lb. People have different issues, and their decision to follow a particular diet should be based on self-observations, not on somebody's experience, some research, or what some guru said..

Here's another reason I'm jumping off the insulin band-wagon. CICO failed me years ago because I couldn't adhere to counting calories. LC worked pretty well for me for about 6 months, but then the satiating effect seemed to wear off and I never did reach my goal, as that last 5-10 lbs have been very stubborn. I've gained a couple pounds back and found that i can overeat even the "healthy" LC foods.
What is left for me to try? Other than having maybe 15 lbs of stubborn fat I have zero health symptoms that need to be cured. There is simply no reason for me to reduce insulin for any other purpose than fat loss, and I found even that simply doesn't work to reach my goal.
I don't want to know what the best treatment is for obesity, I want to know the CAUSE of unwanted fat gain so that I can find the best way to treat it for those who have more modest fat loss goals.

Dave, did Colpo mention in his book the metabolic ward studies that did show support of CIH? Because there are some (I read somewhere that he didn't include these because he considered them "too old" or something like that--as if that's a scientifically justifiable reason to exclude them). As well, if you look at the study design of each study, and consider the sample size, you'll easily notice that none of these studies had the statistical power to distinguish macronutrient effects from anything else. At best, they are pilot studies. What NuSi is planning to do, from my reading of the site and some guesswork, is to do a pivotal study that has the proper study design and a proper sample size to be able to distinguish primary endpoints from the noise.
BTW, I'm in the same boat as you concerning the last stubborn 5-10 pounds. I noticed that since I had stopped logging my food intake, my intake of protein and carbs had shot up unknowingly. I'm a world champion in gluconeogenesis, I believe. Since I've gone ketogenic (again) the weight has started to budge downwards again (caloric intake is higher than before! but it seems that I'm always hot, so my metabolism has probably ramped up too). Don't get to caught up in what internet gurus say. Experiment.

"As for his beliefs about being able to eat as many LC calories as you want..."
If you put the proper emphasis on "want", I´d support that statement for many, perhaps most cases.
There´s a reason for why non-calorically-restricted LC diets have a nasty habit of whipping the hides of calorically restricted LF (or just low calorie) diets every time.
If this then is true because of better apetite control, or some other mechanism, is certainly interesting, but of limited practical importance for most dieters.
As for Taubes, I suspect that he (and everyone else) is missing some X factor(s) that cause(s) widespread metabolic problems in western societies, be it gut flora, some chemical, whatever. If I had to guess the mechanism it´s mitochondrial dysfunction of some kind.
I do agree with him that carbohydrates seem to be making things worse when combined with this factor X, probably indeed because of their effect on blood sugar and insulin.

@Stipetic Colpo's book mentioned maybe like 2 studies that concluded there was an advantage on LC, but then he was able demonstrate flaws in these studies. Can't say whether he ommitted any studies but what I read was enough. His case was stronger than any LCer guru has been able to present to me.
Like I said, the reason Taubes can get away with ignoring the evidence is that his whole premise depends on all non-LC supportive research being flawed. Problem is there really are researchers out there who asked the right questions, but they just didn't discover the right answers (in his eyes).

is it possible to be overweight/fat and insulin deficient? is it possible that the last 5- 10 lbs are hard to lose because your body has to get used to functioning on reduced blood sugar and this is a big adjustment and feels uncomfortable? not rhetorical questions.

Taubes wrote a book about a bad science of a weight loss, not a weight-loss bible. Yes, his last book had a title "Why we got fat", but not a "How to loose all the fat we want". He did quite enough to push away the fear of fats, the reliance on an exercise as a weight-loss tool, to promote another strategy for a weight loss than a self-starving. How he could be expected not to miss something? How realistic is it to expect perfection from anyone and going berserk when some x-factors were not explored? Come on!

@Galina replacing bad science with more bad science doesn't suddenly make good science. How someone can make an honest attempt at explaining obesity without even mentioning the word 'leptin' is beyond me.

Gary dig out a lot of interesting but forgotten facts about a weight-loss science of the past. Unlike Nigel, I greatly enjoyed reading. Do you think it all was bad? It gave many of his readers an opportunity to widen their vision area and stopped being concentrated on the counting calories as a sole method of controlling their weight. At the end of the book GCBC he expressed his desire for more research developing the old and forgotten ideas. I see no point in disregarding all what he did because he didn't mention leptine. He didn't even try to give anyone all the answers, it was not his purpose.
The modern research of obesity exists, of course. SG recently had a post about new pills for a weight loss.

I'm glad Taubes got people to challenge conventional wisdom, but the problem is he uses bad, outdated science to commit the same inexcusable mistakes that he criticized the low-fat establishment of doing. You seem to be saying its okay to use bad science and spread misinformation simply because his intentions were good.
The reason these ideas were old and forgotten is because of the newer research that disputes it. There is simply no reason for serious researchers to latch on to an idea that no longer seems plausible. But Taubes instead believes the problem isn't with the hypothesis, the problem is the researchers are all bias.
I know for me I have no reason to continue latching on to this idea because I have found limitations in its effectiveness, and I also have no reason to believe that I have any problems whatsoever with insulin and/or blood glucose. I do know that I have a problem with over-consumption of calories which hinders my ability to reach my ideal weight.

I have never been tested because I've never had any symptoms that would lead me to question my health enough to pursue that. I am athletic, physically active, never had problems with lethargy, but the one symptom is I do feel like I'm addicted to food.
Scientific literature hasn't given me a reason to suspect blood glucose either once I spent the time to see both sides of the argument.
Point is I no longer believe its appropriate to use insulin / blood glucose as a null hypothesis for people who don't have obvious symptoms of say metabolic syndrome or diabetes.

It is not a Star Wars episode where everything is either bad or good. I mainly disagree with a black and white representation ,I also don't think that old research is necessary outdated and "bad". I am not a scientist, practical side matters for me the most. From looking into a science research from a lay person perspective it is easy to notice how hard it is to design or to conduct a research study which would satisfy everyone (and avoid accusation in a bad science). For that reason I especially appreciated the chapter in GCBC about epidemiology observations. It took for native populations 20 years to develop Western health problem!I got sort of tired of observing sides using different research as if they played cards - one card bits another. It looks like we often forget that science is a never ending search for often illusive and too complicated truth. I don't expect the NuSI program to cross all t's, but I hope their research will make LC diets more acceptable for application. Only a wide-spread application will be able to generate more or less final answers.
In your case, I think if you don't have any blood glucose issues, you hardly need a diet very low in carbs. I wonder, can you fast comfortably?

@Galina, once I was able to see both sides, it became very easy to recognize that the LF and LC groups are far more likely to misinterpret or cherry-pick science to support their belief than the CICO people. The disagreement I have over CICO is whether its behavioral or physiological. I definitely believe its mostly physiological. I don't fault people for not agreeing because there isn't enough data in this area.
So you can point out all you want about how science isn't perfect and so on, but it doesn't change my perception as to who is really leaning in the right direction towards finding the truth.

@Dave,
I think the final truth about LC diets in all complexity will be found only after mass application, which is now impossible because LC diets are demonized and politically incorrect. I don't think a science will give all answers, but will open gates for farther trying.
I see so many problems with CICO approach, that I just don't know where to start. I don't advocate ignoring calories of consumed food, rather than finding natural ways to eat less.

I see problems with the CICO treatment approach because it assumes we have full behavioral control of out intake and expenditure, but I really think living in the environment we live in, it is virtually improbable that some people could ever sustain a healthy weight for reasons well outside of their own control.
But for short term weight status, I think CICO is pretty darn compelling.

I went on diets before. Short result doesn't matter much. One of interesting old research by A.Key about the effect of starvation still gives some clues about potential benefits or shortcommings of limiting CI. Micromanagement of CO is just impossible. The worst case scenario when people think that they can compensate indulgences with moving more. Fat chance!

Dave said, "but the one symptom is I do feel like I'm addicted to food."
that may be your symptom right there. i felt like i had to eat constantly. only if i eat low carb and eat zero fruit am i able to go hours with thinking of food. buy or borrow a well-sterilized glucose meter, use a new lancet (needle) and test your blood sugar after eating 75 grams of a fast-acting carb. don't include fat in the meal cuz it will slow the glucose release into your bloodstream. test 1 hour later and then 2 hours later. if you are under 140 at one hour, you don't have a blood sugar problem. until you test, you don't know. i am athletic and muscular and had no red flags outside of being hungry all the time and gaining a lot of weight on my stomach. after LC, my lipids are great, but i still can't tolerate glucose will. probably cuz of an inuslin deficiency. i'll try to put up a video of my doing a front flip off a diving board at 47. you'll see that appearances can be deceiving when it comes to blood sugar issues.

Wooo,I just wonder why LC stops working the way it did in the magical past.In past I blamed it on the high fat craze where people just started adding in fat on top of fatty foods and then I would fall for this idea and gain belly fat like crazy.But then I starve myself and find at 42 that my body seems resistant to weightloss.
Now hear me out here as I am gonna talk about binge drinking and I know that irks you when people crash diet and then complain.Last friday I ate perfect LCHF all week but was eating large amounts of fat and so my belly got big.This weekened I drank Friday and then Saturday and today on Monday I am skinnier looking.This fuels the idea that carbs bump up metabolism by large amount.
Now I will tell you of this eye opening video on Jimmy's site that did a study of T3 levels and what effect different macro diets had.It was eye opening because at 800cal per day on LC the T3 levels dropped in a few days time.When a mixed diet at the still reduced 800cal per day was started the T3 levels slowly started to rise.But when a high carb 800cal a day diet was started T3 levels shot right back up to starting levels.
That said the study also showed that LC or any macronutrient diet plan raised T3 to normal if calories were increased to hypercaloric levels.So this explains why weight watchers works so well,you cut calories but since carbs are set pretty high the metabolism doesn't bonk and weightloss is very good.BUT it also explains why you have to have pure will power to do weight watchers since a high metabolism equals high appetite.
So I am stumped and trying 1500cal with PHD ratios.I love LC and super stable BS levels but can't stand the slow down of my metabolism.....IE extreme dry skin and lethargic when calories are cut.But I find that when I increase calories I just gain fat.You will school me that its the binge drinking and then crash dieting ;) LOL So for me crash dieting means most likely I have to stick with carbs in my diet and deal with the hypoglycemia or not lose any weight.

@Wolfstriked
All the T3 stuff sounds correct. One trap not to fall into, however, is assuming that a lowered T3 is a bad sign. Ron Rosedale talks about this all the time. Carb consumption will necessarily raise T3, but there's nothing to say this is good per se. Likewise, an 800kcal starvation diet tends to lower it as well. One can make the case that a lower T3, but not elevated TSH, is a healthier (longevity) state to be in.
The combination of LC and low cal is probably a disaster. I'd reckon that it is the cause of most of the complaints you hear about long-term VLC diets. The hunger-abating effects leads to people just not eating enough calories to support a healthy metabolism. Personally, I'm sometimes shocked at the amount of LC food I need to eat in order not to under eat total cals (~2500).
That said, if you're tracking all your food accurately and don't see any benefit at VLC levels and a slight cal deficit, who's to say adding in some carbs (or a cycle day) wouldn't be a bad thing.
One thing I've noticed (anecdote=data time) is that my body responds best if I eat to my expected basal rate, and create the deficit from weightlifting. Trying just to under eat or combining the two things makes me feel awful.

@Dave
"@Woo I think that body fat is determined mainly by our consumption of calories and that metabolic rate doesn't vary as much as many people like to believe, and that our eating is mainly controlled by the body as opposed to being behavioral like many CICOs think. "
I don't disagree that calories affect the metabolic rate, as well as types of calories, but what you are FAILING TO SEE is that calories are downstream the endocrine system and the nervous system combined. If I eat a bag of pixi sticks or a bowl of captn' crunch, my blood glucose is going to soar, and then it will CRASH. This will promote extreme hunger for calories as well as an inability to normally oxidize body fat for energy. People with mitochondrial, endocrine, nervous system disorder typically fail to process a normal carbohydrate rich diet correctly. Hyperinsulinemia is a symptomatic result, which shunts energy to storage and chronically prevents normal body fat oxidation. Hepatic insulin resistance most notably prevents normal body fat oxidation via chronic abnormally excessive liver glucose production, which will prevent the body from totally and completely using body fat at rest. This is why insulin resistant and obese people oxidize fat excessively at meal times, but oxidize fat deficiently in a fasted state. Abnormal insulin sensitivity... and diseased mitochondria, a common cause of abnormal insulin sensitivity.
Obesity and hyperphagia and food addiction and dopamine insensitivity are the RESULTS of the real problem, which is metabolic, endocrine and nervous system origin.
When you keep saying over, and over, AND OVER that calories affect our body fat level...you just don't seem to get that calories aren't a random thing we decide. Calories are COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR CONTROL. If you see a delicious cheesecake or buffet, if you starve yourself, your brain isn't fooled. It responds to the buffet by making you puke and feel sick of food for a day. It responds to the diet by forcing you to binge. This is what your brain does, secondary to what your FAT TISSUE tells it. Leptin, no leptin, insulin, no insulin... your brain hears about it and makes you eat or not.
Sometimes I think I'm the only person in the world who eats normally which is ironic because most think I eat like a weirdo. As a normal person I can verify that if I eat a lot I get a lot less hungry and stop eating so much; I also become energetic. If I diet, I become very hungry. For some reason no one else seems to have this insight, that the DELICIOUSOMG YUM dinner didn't make you fat, because if you keep eating the DELICIOUS OMG I CANT STOP EATING dinner, the next day you want to puke and eat less and feel really warm. Am I the only person in the world who is still aware that the body regulates its energy balance?
There is one exception to this rule: chronic abnormal hyperinsulinemia. This prevents the nausea, prevents the anorexia, brain keeps screaming for more and more food, secondary to your gut/ass/thighs expanding like tumors, which is a direct result of that chronic abnormally elevated insulin and other endocrine factors.

@Dave that link you provided is probably just one small factor of MANY factors that can affect endocrine dynamics to promote fat storage. I absolutely reject this chilidsh "paleo" theory that eating grains is the cause of obesity and if we all ate tubers it wouldn't exist. Childish and stupid is the only phrase worthy to describe it.
If you look outside the box you'll realize there are thousands of factors dietary and non-dietary about modern life that just don't apply to obesity resistant cultures. Light patterns, stress patterns, social patterns, micronutrient status, THE PRENATAL ENVIRONMENT (which I personally think is overwhelmingly the largest factor determining why obesity proneness is progressive and severe in modern society)... all of these will combine to produce modern diseases including obesity, which means to say, abnormal energy use and storage and a general allergic like intolerance to a normal carbohydrate based diet.
Asking for us to produce "the cause" of unwanted fat gain is like asking for "the cause" of being unhappy with your life. Usually, it's not going to be just one thing, it's going to be an entire pattern and situation... and unlike being happy with one's life, the fact is obesity is not something you can turn off or on, many of the factors are HARD CODED or at least will take years and decades maybe to improve if they ever do.
I can tell you that focusing on calorie restriction is THE WRONG way to go as a therapy. Focusing on glucose tolerance, fat oxidation and insulin management is absolutely the best therapy for obesity... calorie control/restriction is just one part of that.
Here's the difference: If I ate anything I wanted but cut calories, I WOULD BE A LARDASS right now. If I tried to eat a controlled calorie portion of insulinogenic food that suppressed body fat oxidation, I would store fat and my body would make me eat more and it would simply refuse to use energy as well. Even though my metabolic rate would increase, I would build fat, and I would probably eat more. Even at an equal calorie level, I would be fatter.
On the other hand, taking micronutrient supplements, drinking green tea, caffeine in moderation, and then being careful about the timing of foods and the macronutrient ratios <--- this is HIGHLY EFFECTIVE to keep me thin. Why? This therapy address the endocrine/nervous system nature of the problem. Trying to eat 1 bowl of potatoes or 1 bowl of cereal DOES NOT work long term, and the results are sub-par in terms of body composition and well being.

Like I said, I agree people don't always have much control over their intake, but I do think some people do have the capacity to permanently reduce their calories enough to stay weight reduced. I have family members that have done so for the past 10-20 years after periods of being weight. And its quite easy for them to do so.
I think leptin is a powerful hormone in maintaining energy balance and keeping people fat, but still why they got fat in the first place is more what we need to look at.
But with all that, I'm just finding the insulin part of it to be a hard sell these days.

@Dave... the issue I am seeing with your approach here is that on one hand you say you don't trust Taubes and then, on the other you try to dismiss the science he presents... which is it? I don't trust Colpo, I don't trust Guyenet but I will still (occasionally) read what they present as it may have some value to it -- although I would be dishonest if I did not say that I read then with a cautious and critical eye. That said, I also read Taubes with a critical eye as well.. I think we all should treat everything presented in this way.
You seem to think that Colpo's Metabolic Ward studies are rock-solid evidence of CICO... do you live on a Metabolic Ward Dave? I don't.. I live in the real world where humans are an "open" system... not a "closed" system as used in the definition of the First Law of Thermodynamics. You need to measure *everything* in, out and stored, in order to make CICO work in a *closed* system... can YOU do that, living as you do in an open system? I wonder how it is that so many wild-living animals maintain perfect equilibrium without even a kitchen scales at their disposal? And make no mistake, we humans ARE animals :-)
I also note that in at least one of Colpo's rock-solid Metabolic Ward studies, not all the participants were confined to the ward... some trustees (hospital employees as I recall) were allowed to roam freely! So much for rock-solid evidence. And perhaps you need to stop and consider that perhaps they balanced the CICO *after* the fact? For example: if at the end of a month I could show that the amount of energy I stored, burned and wasted, exactly equalled how much I ingested and freed up from my body stores? Does that really prove that the amount I ate was the driving force behind how much I used, stored etc... or is it just possible I only ate as much as my body needed, to do all those things? Try reversing the cause and effect in your mind Dave... see what happens :-)
And finally to you Dave -- self-described as "athletic, physically active, never had problems with lethargy", from me -- a person of middle age with over 25 years of dealing with obesity (after being young, slim, athletic and all that, myself up until my late 20's) but now vastly improved after 4 years of an LCHF diet -- I'd say that you will have a great deal of difficulty convincing me that insulin (driven by sugars and refined starches) is NOT a major factor in this issue. And it seem that no matter what you "believe" there is substantial scientific evidence to back my anecdotal experience ;-)
You might think that you're "I'm alright Jack" attitude will stand you in good stead for the future, but why do you think so many people have ended up with Type 2 Diabetes, Obesity and/or Metabolic Syndrome in the first place? Magic beans???

FrankG, fantastic comment. I can't wait until Dave hits middle age. Suddenly it will all seem so clear to him because his sorry physical condition will force him to really think and compare his current condition to how he was in his teens/20s when he was only 15 lbs overweight and had the same amount of willpower and moral rectitude as now at 50 when he's 50-100 lbs overweight.
What most people only realise in middle age due to the sudden-onset middle-aged spread and lethargy, unfortunate people like Wooo and myself realised in our 20s due to our history of pediatric obesity which developed long before we could develop imaginary problems like "emotional eating". Try living in a body that was never thin and athletic. Obesity being an endocrine problem seems kinda axiomatic.

Where is this science supporting the insulin hypothesis? I have not seen it. Taubes has not presented much of any science supporting it, which is why I don't trust him. However the metabolic ward studies are out there, and I find it hard to believe my metabolism would suddenly work differently in a metbolic ward than it does in free living situations.
We all know free living conditions are not the gold standard for conducting a scientific experiment, so why are those the kinds of studies typically cited in support of the IH? Even then they don't really prove anything about insulin, just that people can adhere better to LC in the short term.

Oh and all this stuff that you attribute must be due to insulin could very well be done by other mechanisms. For instance leptin is the body fat regulating hormone that determines a set point. We don't need to have high insulin levels to have growing fat stores. We just need to have calories to store in the fat. If the calories are there, the fat will be stored. Anything can cause us to over-consume calories...

@Dave
Re: taubes
I don't know what taubes really believes regarding calories exactly but I know for a fact he doesn't think you can eat all the calories you want and stay thin. He has been quoted over and over and over again as saying that calories being high are a result, not a cause, of obesity...which sort of implies he thinks they are important / required.
Fact is unavoidable: insulin is acting on the fat tissue to distend the adipocyte. THIS . IS. A. BIOLOGICAL. FACT. I'm tired of these anti-Taubes strawman arguments accusing him of being against the laws of physics. Endocrinology is not at odds with physics, they are mutually compatable. The antagonists of Taubes myopically put one before the other ("Endocrine disorder results from overconsuming energy" or alternatively "you can't be fat w/o consuming excessive energy!" <---stupid people say these things)
Stephan Guyenet can post all the "evidence" he wants regarding fat cell insulin resistance and a greater efflux of FFA in obesity... it won't change the fact insulin is acting on the fat tissue to STUFF IT BURSTING with fat in the first place.
Therefore, if extremely obese people are less sensitive to insulin in their adipocytes than the lean is a meaningless finding.
This is like stating a theft only reduced 75% of your savings, therefore you have invalidated the relationship between theft and loss of assets. In fact, studies have been conducted showing that people of the same SES bracket who have never been the victim of theft have more assets to lose from theft!!! What more powerful evidence do you require that theft is of no relation to loss of assets?
We can see these arguments are missing the larger picture and jumping to irrational conclusions. Few people can see this when similar stupidities are uttered regarding insulin sensitivity/dynamics and obesity. Fat tissue of obese people is less insulin sensitive and spills FFA, this doesn't change the fact fat people have ridiculous insulin levels which is keeping their adipocytes distended more than it isn't.
Regarding leptin or "other" endocrine disorders...yea all true, and I wrote this originally if you were paying attention (when I summarized the insulin hypothesis, I noted excessive fat tissue insulin stimulation as being "secondary to other disorders"). Leptin can't make you fat w/o messing up insulin. Ditto cortisol, progesterone/estrogen, thyroid, various psychotropics, and anything else that destroys your endocrine and/or nervous system.
The fatness question will always come right back down to the feet of insulin and your fat cell talking it out, with facilitative calories from your environment, shunted into your pie hole via extreme hunger perceived in your brain, which is mostly a result of the dance between insulin and your fat tissue vs sympathetic stimulation to the fat cell.

@Brian,the video on thyroid and macro-nutrient ratios said same thing....that just because T3 raises doesn't mean fat burning increases as there are other factors.But I also have read studies that say where fat deposits indicates what hormone is out of whack.My huge ass love handles and a small belly mean low thyroid from what I gather.
My problem is I like to splurge on weekends and drink and eat whatever then go LC and low calorie.And every monday to wednsday I look a little leaner at wich point my metabolism bonks hard and thursday and friday I bloat out,get lethargic,constipated,dry skin etc.It happens over a course of 3 days like the video stated if calories drop too low.I think then that 120gms carbs and following the PHD food guidelines will allow me to drop down calories and not get these symptoms......or so I hope as this is my first week at it.Will keep anyone here posted as to what I discover.

@Dave regarding your "last few stubborn pounds", weight loss resistance is very common after weight reduction. Restricting carbohydrate is a therapy, not a cure. The endocrine or nervous system abnormalities leading to abnormal fat gain cannot be whisked away with a magic wand. In myself, I am very very prone to gain body fat quickly... it will be obvious and visible. I don't resolve it by starving myself, I maintain my weight by CONTROLLING MY ENDOCRINE SYSTEM AND NERVOUS SYSTEM. I'll be more mindful of the foods I eat, the timing I eat them, I'll drink more green tea, I'll see more light, drink more caffeine, I'll try to sleep better (a huge cause of fat gain)...I'll do so many things your average idiot dieter would never consider doing.
Which is why I am not your average idiot dieter, and most people say to me "OMG NO WAY YOU WERE NEVER FAT!!!"
Then there is the issue of just *accepting* your body. Are you seriously agruing against a POWERFUL therapy to fight obesity because of 5 fucking pounds? Are you kidding? What makes you think you have some god given right to be 5 pounds less? While on the subject, what makes you think you have any insight into obesity of the sort that crippled me mentally and physically as a child?
Are you kidding?
I was 113 pounds last year, I'm 122 pounds this year. I'm 5'5. Guess what? I couldn't give a crap about these 9 pounds, mostly manifested as reproductive fat and lean tissue, which most people tell me makes me look way more attractive. You're talking about a few lots pennies in a discussion which is mostly about life ruining debt. YOU HAVE NO INSIGHT, and your personal anecdote is beyond meaningless as 5 pounds has nothing to do with medical obesity.

I'm not one to say that Taubes is violating the laws of physics. I think his stance is quite clear to me. What Taubes says most certainly implies metabolic advantage though. Taubes says that you could eat two different isocaloric diets and the one with less carbs and lower insulin levels would lead to higher energy expenditure (assuming you are carb intolerant). This is what he means when he explains that Cals IN and OUT are not independent and that carb reduction per se can lead to weight loss by affecting Cals OUT. This idea has been disproven though.
And the next point is that your argument about insulin acting on fat is like saying my bank is responsible for my growing bank account, not the fact that I'm providing the money that goes in there. But since the bank facilitates the deposit, it must be responsible for the growth.
Not going to discredit carb reduction as a valuable treatment for people with severe metabolic problems, but I'm merely questioning whether its really necessaro for me or the average person with some weight to lose to think about weight loss in terms of our diet's effect on insulin.

Oh and I differ a lot from the CICO folks in that I believe metabolic advantage is certainly possible. There's no reason to believe that different macro-nurients that are metabolized completely differently wouldn't yield different total body energy expenditure.
The problem though is that it simply has not been observed in any meaningful way. That is where lies the truth in 'a calorie is a calorie'. Its not some conspiracy to sell more grains or something.

Dave, it doesn't sound like you have a weight problem now, but there is something off if you think you are addicted to food.
Just out of curiosity, get yourself a glucose-meter and check how your blood sugar fluctuates during the day and how you react on different foods.There is a chance you may get some clues. I am not suggesting you are a diabetic, of course.

Dave said: "I think leptin is a powerful hormone in maintaining energy balance and keeping people fat, but still why they got fat in the first place is more what we need to look at.
But with all that, I'm just finding the insulin part of it to be a hard sell these days."
Don't you see the contradictions in what you are saying, Dave? In one instance you disavow insulin because it's tied to Taubes and in the second instance you praise its hormone twin, leptin. Both are hormones. One can't do anything without affecting the other. They are siamese twins, Dave (Why do I feel like I'm in 2001: A Space Odyssey?).
BTW, like I told you, those metabolic ward studies are not powered to detect the changes that they set out to test (the sample size and study designs are inadequate). The results are all meaningless, even the ones that show an advantage (btw, Colpo has a way of "finding flaws" in the studies that stand in his way). Colpo has zero experience with these clinical studies and it shows in his analysis.

No leptin and insulin are not twins. They do different things. The reason people blame insulin is because insulin acts to prevent fat oxidation and also facilitates fat storage, as if the key to preventing these activities is to simply lower insulin. But the problem is it is impractical if not impossible to eat a non-insulinogenic diet to somewhere prevent these activities from occuring. All it takes is a tiny bit of insulin and a crapload of fat calories to lead to a caloric surplus and addition of new body fat.
So there is no contradiction as the researchers generally tell us insulin is not the culprit. I remain completely unconvinced that Taubes and his followers are the only people that know how to do research.
You say the metabolic ward studies are inadequate, so that means my null hypothesis has to be insulin right, even though there are so many other reasons they don't believe its insulin, like the fact that they can't even find clear associations between fat gain and insulin levels.

@Dave: "All it takes is a tiny bit of insulin and a crapload of fat calories to lead to a caloric surplus and addition of new body fat." Seriously?!? On what do you base that statement? Any hands-on practical experience, evidence-based proof you can cite, or are you just parroting what you have heard somewhere?
My own personal experience as a Type 2 Diabetic includes: 5 years of carefully listening to and dutifully following the conventional wisdom... I managed great Blood Glucose (BG) control with the help of injected insulin but also rapidly gained an extra 100 lbs.
Having read GCBC I realised what I had to do and cut out virtually all carbs (initially) -- my constant gnawing hunger disappeared almost overnight (that alone was worth the price of admission); I lost 25lbs effortlessly in the first two months while eating and snacking to satiety on things like eggs, bacon, dark chocolate (AKA a crapload of fat calories); my total daily dosage (TDD) of injected insulin went down quickly from 130+ units to 60 units and within the year was in single figures.. it currently stands at just 7 units per day.
To repeat a LCHF diet reduced my daily need for injected insulin from 130+ unit to 7 units while easily maintaining over 100lbs weight loss for over 4 years... so far.
That was 4 years ago... I still eat LCHF, my BG control is still excellent, as are all my other health markers as measured by regular blood tests (not guessed at or based on my "feelings"), my weight and build is the best I have seen since my 20's. It is easy, sustainable, enjoyable and satisfying.
Now this is where you dismiss my story as anecdotal or that I am an outlier because have diabetes :-)
My son is also young, fit, lean etc... but he is smart enough to realise that he carries my genes but that if he puts some thought into what he eats on a regular basis (the macro-nutrient content) now, while still enjoying the occasional beer, pizza etc... he stands a good chance of not following me (and apparently most of the developed and developing world) down the road to metabolic damage and morbidity.

Open your mind Dave... stop listening blindly to "them"... do some primary-source reading for yourself, don't rely just on others' interpretations of studies, examine their sources critically and make up your own mind. And yes that includes critically questioning what is said by Taubes, Attia, Lustig, Eenfeldt etc... but first realise that this matter is not as cut and dried as you seem to think

Sorry because you have diabetes that doesn't mean insulin is the reason people are overweight. There are countless studies demonstrating overweight people with perfectly normal fasting insulin levels. Insulin is NOT the determinant of weight status. Period.

How about a trade. I'll give you a study showing insulin levels don't matter and you can give me a study that explains why your diabetes is in any way relevant to me and the rest of the non-diabetic population.

@Dave: so afar as I am concerned I am my own study.. I have "countless" spreadsheets and other records detailing my BG, insulin amounts, blood tests etc... over the last decade or so... but as predicted you think that having diabetes negates my experience.
How do you think I (and increasingly many more people) became diabetic in the first place? I suppose you will say that it all my own fault for thoughtless overeating... due to a lack of will-power most likely :-)
Also as I suspected your "countless" studies showing "perfect" insulin levels are just so much hot air.

Keep up with the straw men. Anyways you are making exactly the same mistake that the low fat dogmatists did...completely demonizing one macro-nutrient group based on anecdotes and little to no actual evidence. How do we know it isn't merely processed foods that generally are high in carb that caused this whole epidemic? Why does it have to be insulin? There is no evidence that insulin is the root cause of diabetes BTW. Doesn't matter if insulin is the key to TREATING diabetes, and the fact that LF dogmatists got it wrong doesn't mean everyone that isn't LC is also wrong. Pretty terrible logic if you ask me.

I actually agree that it is mostly the processed foods high in sugars and refined starches that have cased this epidemic... that is quite clear to me. As is the fact that those are exactly the "foods" which have the greatest impact on insulin levels!
Insulin (as any biology textbook could tell you) being the major fat storage hormone!

No I choose not read a blog post from someone described as "...the founder of Weightology, LLC. He has a Master’s degree in Nutrition from the University of Florida and a second Master’s degree in Exercise Science from Washington State University."
You stated "countless studies"... where are they?
As I mentioned above I am interested in primary sources. But you have ably demonstrated that you are not following that advice but instead relying on others (with their own agendas) to tell you what to think.

...and while we may have gained some additional insight into the role of insulin and related hormones since the 1960's, do you really think that its major functions have changed since that time? Seriously?

Well Krieger explains why insulin is not this big bad storage hormone but since you chose not to read it well can't help you there.
Look I don't have the studies saved to my computer, and don't have access to many of the full texts so I've had to rely on others to provide that data. Problem is if I link to sites that interpret them (ie. CarbSanity, Krieger, Guyenet, etc.) you will dismiss them because they aren't the primary source. The beauty of the bloggers is they do the work for you and its just a matter of whether their logic makes sense. And I found when multiple sources are all saying the same thing about the IH, and the IH defenders logic is so terribly weak, its hard to remain a believer.

Talk about straw men?!? Insulin is NOT a big bad storage hormone... it is essential for the survival of a healthy body as anyone with Type 1 Diabetes could tell you... if you would listen.
If you cannot provide primary sources then I continue to reject your assertion that there are countless studies proving your position.
My position is not based on belief, or faith in bloggers.

The thing is you did not state that there are studies which support your position; instead you launched into an apparently hyperbolic assertion that "There are countless studies demonstrating overweight people with perfectly normal fasting insulin levels."
"countless" and yet you can't even provide a single example... what would you make of that?
Why would I accept your word on anything your have written thus far or in the future?
I see the same thing in the bloggers you mentioned by name (although I have not read Kreiger but his site looks like an advertisement for his services).
Evel-lyn is constantly saying "oh I have a study somewhere to prove my point but I can't be bothered to post it just now" and Guyenet twists and misinterprets studies till the cows come home -- he tried to pass off a week-long trial of infusing insulin into mice brains, as being the same as chronic high insulin with IR in humans... are you kidding me?!?
If you blindly trust these people without looking further into their sources then you are lost my friend.

I can't change your religious beliefs, but if you say they are not based on beliefs or faith in bloggers (including woo), where is your evidence supporting the IH? Post me some studies.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10022419
http://www.clinicalnutritionjournal.com/article/S0261-5614(05)00177-9/abstract
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17587399
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6696064
I could go on and on but I already I wasted my time as you are going to reject these studies.

I enjoy/appreciate reading Woo and several other bloggers.. that is NOT the same as saying I accept any "facts" they state without using my own critical thinking... including (where appropriate) checking out the primary sources for myself.
I object strongly to your implication that my position is based on any religious-type blind faith... indeed that seems closer to your own stance.

I don't see how I lack critical thinking skills when you are clearly close-minded. You refuse to even read from bloggers who don't share your view or maybe seek to make money from their knowledge in the field (doesn't Taubes sell books BTW?)
The reason I think you have religious-type blind faith is because you extrapolated that because insulin reduction treats a serious illness that you have, it must be the key to everyone's weight problems. When we all know being overweight does not equate to having diabetes. Diabetes happens to people who are both thin and overweight, and if anything being overweight is a cause of it, or both conditions have a similar cause, but it is quite a leap of faith to suggest insulin is the cause of both when there isn't evidence to support it (I'm still waiting on your counter-evidence BTW).

I can see how these studies might be used to bolster your overall position (to paraphrase) that insulin is not the major player here (I disagree, obviously) but I fail to see how any of these examples satisfy your criteria of "studies demonstrating overweight people with perfectly normal fasting insulin levels."
Please clarify.

"...you extrapolated that because insulin reduction treats a serious illness that you have, it must be the key to everyone's weight problems"
Where did I say this? or is it yet another straw man..? Interesting how the ones who accuse of such tactics are more often revealing their own behaviours ;-)

Your distrust in bloggers is basically an ad hominem attack on them. Because you don't trust their motives, you think the information they provide must be wrong. But if you actually read what they say and cross-reference it with sources that are both for and against it, you will easily see who is most likely right and who is most likely wrong.
And here is your extrapolation:
"Now this is where you dismiss my story as anecdotal or that I am an outlier because have diabetes :-)"
So let's start with my rejection of the IH to explain obesity. You go on to say you have diabetes and so Taubes' ideas from GCBC influenced you to go against conventional wisdom and you found success.
Then you go on to pre-emptively criticize that I will dismiss your story because its anecdotal and you are an outlier. Is this not a valid dismissal though? If not, then that would mean your anecdotal experience should be used as evidence and that your being a diabetic should as well. That's what I call bad science and I'm frankly tired of it. I want to know the truth and rid myself of the dogma.

My personal evidence is not based on the fact that I have Type 2 Diabetes but that: as one, I have extensive and direct experience of what insulin does when you manipulate the levels in your body.
Are you suggesting that insulin works differently in a diabetic or overweight body than it does in yours?
I have read Guyenet, I have tried to read Evil-Lyn's loonie bin... I kept hearing that the Carbohydrate-Insulin Hypothesis (CIH) was long dead and buried, so I went looking for their evidence and found NONE!
Yet they keep saying it...
According to your reasoning if enough bloggers say the same thing then it must be true... right?
Gary Taubes was the first to point out that CIH is an alternative hypothesis that has yet to be proven... maybe the NuSI initiative will help one way or the other in that regard, but in the meantime it still makes the most sense of my own experience and the experience I have shared with many others on blogs and forums.

You totally don't get it dude. I don't think you're capable of having a logical discussion with me on this. I believed the IH for a long time only until recently did it finally click after I spent enough time reading the counter-arguments.

If people can feel different and your body will respond differently after eating 2000 calories of pasta vs. 2000 calories of meat. I don’t understand how people can not understand that different food can have a different metabolic effect. Then it cannot be so hard to understand that all the calories are not the same.

@Sam there is certainly a different metabolic effect to eating 2000 cals of pasta vs. meat, however when it comes to quantifying fat storage and energy expenditure the net effect on the human body at the end of the day is virtually the same.

You seem confused Dave "...I differ a lot from the CICO folks in that I believe metabolic advantage is certainly possible. There's no reason to believe that different macro-nurients that are metabolized completely differently wouldn't yield different total body energy expenditure."
Perhaps you need to collect your thoughts and come back when you are more coherent?

Earlier you also posed the question "How do we know it isn't merely processed foods that generally are high in carb that caused this whole epidemic?"
So what mechanism (if not insulin) do you propose is responsible for "processed foods generally high in carbs" as being the culprit here?

Frank, I love how you cherry-picked only part of what I wrote to make me look bad.
What about this part,
"The problem though is that it simply has not been observed in any meaningful way. That is where lies the truth in 'a calorie is a calorie'. Its not some conspiracy to sell more grains or something."
Meaning its theoretically possible, but hasn't actually been observed.
Frank we need more research in the second question, and I myself don't have an understanding of it, but gut flora seems like a better place to explore.

It's odd because even Stephan Guyenet with his Food Reward idea seems hard-pressed to come up examples of rewarding food that do NOT contain sugar and/or refined starch... there are some that have sugar/starch AND fat (like donuts I guess) and other that are JUST sugar -- like soda -- but despite repeatedly asking, I've yet to be given examples that are just fat.
Weird huh?
So what is the common element here? Carbs of course and what effect do they have in the body? They raise insulin. And what does insulin do in regards fat storage and energy partitioning? And is it possible that could leave us still hungry and wanting more food?
Yes... but... the CIH has been disproven! It is dead and buried!
Where? How? Show me your working? All I hear is assertions with nothing substantial to back them up ;-)

http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/83/6/1442.full --Metabolic advantage of low-carbohydrate diets: a calorie is still not a calorie
and even more recently...
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154 -- Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance
Do you really want me to start listing all the points above that you have selectively ignored Dave...

So some kind of gut flora that only works on sugars and or refined carbs... it does what exactly... change how much is digested... how much is absorbed
Do you really mean to suggest that the amount of calories we put in our mouths may not be the same as the amount our bodies actually use or store etc... :-0
Or that we may use different macro-nutrients differently -- all while never forgetting that a calorie is still a calorie of course :-)

For the first reference of the first link, James Krieger later recanted his conclusion as incorrect and that there actually is not a metabolic advantage.
And the second one has been thoroughly discussed when it came out by the usual suspects. Even to give you the benefit of the doubt and say that this is evidence in favor, there are still two dozen metabolic ward studies that tell another story.

If not insulin then why carbs... that`s what I don`t get???
The "calories as the driving force" crowd seem to use terms like "caloric density", or "empty calories" and, of course "eating more calories mean more fat storage" but carbs have less than half the calories of fat?!?
So logically I need to be eating sticks of butter, or chugging back bottles of olive oil to gain weight... not eating donuts (where any fat is effectively diluted by the carbs) or soda...
Meantime we are in the throes of a worldwide Diabetsity epidemic when we are being exhorted (and apparently have listened) to all the low fat advice!

If it were just about carbs, then we wouldn't see a patterns of certain carbs being better or more satiating than others.
Also we would see consistent patterns of insulin levels and change in fat stores which we don't.

Yes this more recent study was thoroughly discussed by bloggers but none could dimiss the evidence of a metabolic advantage to low carb.
And the Metabolic Ward studies show what exactly? That over a period of time the energy in/freed-up from stores is the same as the energy out/stored and wasted. Yes this is a physical law... so what?
Remember that on a closed Meatbolic Ward *everything* is (supposed to be) measured... including any energy wasted in breath, urine, from fidgeting, from Basal Metabolic Rate etc... that's how it all adds up!
At rest, those on low carb were buring more calories than the others. No magic involved... no laws of phsyics were harmed in the process!
I believe I already discussed this above -- although you did not respond. I could show you the same... that does not prove that how much I eat is driving the process.
Quite apart from all that the biggest advantage to me is that I am satisfied and no longer hungry all the time... don't forget that I have decades of trying to lose significant excess fat mass (not that stubborn last 5 lbs!) and I've tried everything.
I'm sick and tired of being hungry and depresesd because I am being told I lack the mythical will-power... turns out it was all a lie!

Fat is not palatable?
Funny how I really enjoy a nice juicy well-marbled steak, or the way brocolli is so much more appealing when dripping with butter!
C`mon Dave.. you`ll have to do better than that!

If you eat carbs -- especially sugars or refined starches your insulin requirements will go up. Period.. ask any diabetic.
To a far lesser extent Protein does the same.
Fats hardly at all.
So tell me what is inconsistent about that again

"I'm sick and tired of being hungry and depresesd because I am being told I lack the mythical will-power... turns out it was all a lie!"
Here's the biggest logical fallacy of them all when it comes to the LC community. Its this belief that anyone who doesn't specifically believe in the IH must by default believe in CICO and obesity being a behavioral disorder. And not only that, most of us are also hard-core supporters of low-fat dieting!
But turns out some of us lie somewhere in between and we shouldn't be criticized for doing so because the bulk of the evidence lies somewhere in between.
You have your anecdotal experiences with LC and I have mine. What if you were not diabetic and started off closer to being in an ideal lean state and found that LC simply didn't work for you other than taking you about halfway towards your goal, and then the effects started to wear off after a while? Then what? How would you feel about it?
Maybe I shouldn't complain because I'm not that bad, but everyone's expectations are relative and there's no shame in setting the bar for myself high.

"Fat is not palatable?
Funny how I really enjoy a nice juicy well-marbled steak, or the way brocolli is so much more appealing when dripping with butter!
C`mon Dave.. you`ll have to do better than that!
"
Another misquote. I said fat "by itself" isn't palatable. Who here eats spoonfuls of lard for dinner?

@Dave, Frank,
I think the final proof of a medical hypothesis or a treatment is practice, not studies of any complexity. Studies are conducted in order to predict with most accuracy the outcome of the treatment/ drug application/diet which would occur in a population using such diet/drug/treatment. I don't understand why the practice of Diabetics population should be completely disregarded. What is the logic of it? Currently only diabetics know more or less how much insulin their body uses, and for that reason their experience attracts so much attention.I think it is unreasonable to completely disregard the data of thousands (I guess) of people with their spread-shits full of BS numbers, units of insulin and everyday weight. Their experience do not contradict text books and proves the insulin theory for diabetics at least.On which ground we could be absolutely sure that general population is very different? More logical would be to guess that at least some portion of population if affected with the same phenomenon. Folks with Insulin Resistance look especially suspicious in that regard.
Dave, because the existence of the insulin theory of obesity annoys you so much, you must be exited that it could be check more diligently in a future and either raise or put to rest. It sounds like you are already 100% sure about the outcome, but in reality I think you are prepared to see more complex picture.

@Galina what annoys me is that Taubes has convinced the masses that good researchers don't exist, unless of course they support his hypothesis. I don't think the IH has stood the test of time because of all the studies that have been done where the majority of them refute it, but maybe a few cherry-picked studies support it.
I really don't see how diabetics who clearly have an insulin deficiency are the key to solving everyone else's weight problems. People have studied them and determined they don't provide the answer and now its on to better things.
I am afraid that LC will become the next LF and people will only yield moderate success because the science isn't quite right.

Interesting to note that Stephan Guyenet reports he has been in discussions with Peter Attia regarding his (SG`s) possible involvement in the NuSI initiative... I think it is a mistake personally but it seems that NuSI is open-minded at least.

@Dave: "People have studied them and determined they don't provide the answer and now its on to better things" ...what the heck is that even supposed to mean and what facts is it based on?
Or is this you just repeating stuff for effect again?
And yes, I am fully aware that this is also only a partial quote... the whole thing is just above for anyone who cares to read it OK? :-)

@Dave I can tell you is not the same for me pasta calories to meat calories. The same is for my wife and many people I have met thru the years. That’s my experience, it will not only have a different metabolic effect it will affect hunger and weight gain differently.
When I was young I use to take supplements to gain weight I would eat 5,000 calories or more per day and couldn’t gain weight. My BMI was 17 when I was 25 years old that all changed at middle age.
Only if you are one of the few lucky ones you wouldn’t find out that a calorie is not a calorie. I don’t need anyone, any guru or study to tell me how it is, I found out for my own with irrefutable evidence.

Things are complicated. Not everybody needs a LC diet, even obese people need different degree of carbs limitation, not all diabetics are deficient in insulin, and insulin resistant people are called such term for a reason.
May be obesity researches are very bright people, but their rate of success if quite modest.May be masses of them are looking in a wrong places for a cure, or more busy with making their bosses happy. As I said before, Stephan recently blogged about their resent break-through - new pills for an obesity treatment. How you could be so kind to them, I don't know. Taubes behaved on an arrogant way toward obesity researches, but it didn't automatically give them a brake.

@Sam, Just like I'm one of the unlucky ones who never gets to witness ghosts, I'm also one of the unlucky ones who loses weight in a predictable way regardless of composition of my diet when paying attention to actual calories. If only my life wasn't so boring.
@Galina not all researchers are studying the same thing. We need to recognize that its a complicated subject and that some focus on different areas so they will come up with different ideas for treatments. What Taubes does is criticize the entire field as a whole, without any real concrete evidence to back it up. Yet when the great critical thinker Taubes hypothesizes, he doesn't address ASP, he doesn't address leptin, he doesn't address protein->insulin, he doesn't address gut flora, he doesn't address the brain, he doesn't even address the role of omega-6 fats.
So is all the research in these days simply irrelevant?

So when all your well-reasoned (hah!) lines of argument fall apart for complete lack of substance, when all else fails lets just fall back on attacking Gary Taubes for your interpretation of what he says! Too funny and so predictable :-)
Blah blah blah... Gary promised that I could lose all the weight I need on low carb and I`m still stuck with this stubborn last 5 lbs Oh woe is me! What a charlatan he must be!

Dave said: "There are countless studies demonstrating overweight people with perfectly normal fasting insulin levels."
this seems to be the case with my sister. she is morbidly obese, but her fasting insulin is around 83. i told her to test after meals, though, to be sure, cuz my fasting is 90 but shoots way up after a high carb meal to dangerous levels.
on the uterine environment front- there are 4 siblings in my family- the two obese ones were normal weight 7 pound somethings. i was like 10 pounds, can't tolerate carbs, but i was overweight on the SAD, not morbidly obese like them. and as i said, my sister's fasting glucose is better than mine.
according to jenny ruhl, most obese people will not develop diabetes unless they already have a genetic predisposition.
we need to dig into this more.

@FrankG your story is as compelling evidence as can be expected.
Eating carbohydrate you were forced to overconsume calories, which was second to the huge doses of insulin required to control your blood sugar,w hich was so disturbed because of the carbohydrate you were eating in an insulin resistant body.
Huge weight gains and euglycemia only at the cost of hyperinsulinemia (huge weight gain/hyperphagia/fat tissue growth) = only possible outcome.
Your experience is the same as mine, except my insulin is controlled by my pancreas. Nothing else different about it.
@Dave Huge fat people with low fasting insulin probably have some kind of sympathetic deficiency. Fat tissue growth is a proposition of fat cell RESISTANCE vs SENSITIVITY to insulin. It is possible to become extremely fat at relatively low concentrations of insulin if the sympathetic/adrenergic/catecholaminergic stimulation of fat cells is deficient. A few examples of likely conditions that can produce this effect:
-Extreme weight loss, which reduces leptin abnormally, which makes the SNS very low activity particularly to fat tissue.
-Brain damage/VMH lesioning, which destroys CNS leptin sensitive cells, effectively tricking your brain into thinking you have no leptin and are starving. This decreases sympathetic tone and fat cells are hypersensitive to insulin, easily distending and not normally releasing FFA for energy.
-Being female, sex steroids which generally makes fat cells hypersensitive to insulin. Even low levels of insulin are sufficient to trap fat in fat tissue with blunted lipolysis/SNS. This is why so many women are hugely fat but "metabolically healthy" with low BP, low blood sugar/hypoglycemia, low triglycerides...all of these are markers of a very low sympathetic tone and when present in teh context of obesity, suggest fat cell insulin hypersensitivity more common in women. Very few men are "metabolically healthy" while obese because the male endocrine system fights fat gain (i.e. SNS/lipolysis) and relatively more obese men are frankly hyperinsulinemic with metabolic syndrome.
Anyway you are correct that excessive insulin is not always the problem, sometimes a deficient sympathetic nervous system, or other insulin sensitizing factor can cause fat tissue growth w/o necessitating hyperinsulinemia.
None of this invalidates the general medical biological fact that fat tissue growth is cheifly regulated by insulin and other endocrine factors.

@Dave problem seems to be you are the one committing this polarizing mentality that "insulin is always bad" and "carbohydrate is always bad".
Nothing about the endocrine hypothesis of obesity or even the insulin hypothesis, OR EVEN the carb/insulin hypothesis requires forging such extreme and simplistic ideas.
Example, if salt promotes hypertension in people with kidney disease that doesn't mean salt is evil or bad. It isn't a proposition of something being ALL NEUTRAL or ALL DISEASE CAUSING. It's about diseases and therapies. Salt restriction is a good idea if you have kidney disease and hypertension.
Salt restriction is a bad idea if you have hypotension and salt wasting tendency.
Salt restriction is meaningless if you are healthy.
If insulin and carbohydrate promote fat storage in people with abnormal metabolism / glucose intolerance/ morbid obesity, restricting carbohydrate can control that symptom and improve health and well being.
If you're a lean person who never can relate to any symptoms of a blood sugar / insulin disorder you probably don't need a low carb diet, and you probably don't have any kind of insulin or blood sugar disorder, and you probably need to stop going on the internet and trying to understand what life is like for morbidly obese people and diabetics who do have a problem in this spectrum.
INSULIN is only a problem when it's a problem.
INSULIN is a vital life giving hormone necessary to survive.
INSULIN also is chiefly culprit/disordered in morbid obesity and diabetes and hypertension and high cholesterol.
What I don't understand dave is why someone who clearly can't relate to having a metabolic disorder is sitting on the internet trying to argue with people who do?
I'll concede your vanity pounds has nothing to do with Frank's obesity and diabeties, or my morbid obesity and PCOS and reactive hypoglycemia.
The question is, why are you conflating your non severe mild weight problem and vanity issues with real endocrine disorders?
I guess you're not doing what all the rest of the paleo bloggers do.
Insulting really fat people seems to be all the rage for paleoz.
*pats chair seat* HERE YOU GO, SIT DOWN at the king's table! You can sit next to Melissa McEwen when she mocks morbidly obese people with frank blood sugar disorders and accuses metabolic diseases of "not being real", because as a 25 year old with a history of allergies and very trivial weight problems, she clearly knows everything about endocrine illnesses like severe obesity, diabetes, and related metabolic problems. Apparently these are all made up, and all are caused by over eating rewarding food. Her friend Stephan Guyenet told her so.
Your experience as a metabolically healthy man with a self image problem also suffices as evidence that low carb diets are useless clincially, so that's why you deserve a seat next to the prom King and Queen of paleo.
Thanks Dave! With your help, I can now be confident my attempts to eat a mildly ketotic diet are useless. I can cure/control my hypoglycemia, severe obesity, PCOS just by restricting calories. The glucose oxidation part is apparently unimportant, and insulin is also unimportant.
I'll get right on implementing that advice, BRB first I have to pre-order a bunch of size 20 clothes... and I should also work on my resignation letter from work when I become too depressed/fatigued to leave my house or wake up, because it's probably also likely I might fall into a depression.

So Wooo if I don't need to control insulin to lose weight as you're saying is the case since I don't have a severe metabolic disorder, what should I do? Am I a candidate for eat less, move more?
And did Taubes not pin the entire obesity epidemic on the carbohydrate effect on insulin? So which is it, insulin is the main culprit or its not. You can't backtrack now.
And on this whole obesity is an endocrine disorder. That is like saying my inability to accumulate wealth is a disorder of my bank, as if it refuses to deposit money in my bank, but the reality is I don't have enough money to deposit to offset the withdrawls. The bank is managing the funds but it is not at fault for what the balance is. And if my withdrawls far exceed my deposits eventually it starts charging me overdraft fees in order to protect itself from me. Sounds similar to how insulin likely works.

Dave,
My advice to you is to stop worrying about 5 imaginary pounds that no one else but you probably cares about.
Like I said...when I quit leptin therapy I was 113 pounds. I was super thin and couldn't wear a size zero , most people said I was too thin, I liked how I looked.
Now I'm 122 pounds. I feel like a massive ball of flab most of the time but logically I know I look normal and am considered thin. Most people tell me I look better at this weight, online and in real life. No one calls me scrawny or says I'm too skinny although I am still regarded as thin/slim.
If I let my brain determine my weight I would be bitching I wasn't 110 pounds. My emotional perception of how my body should look and feel and weigh is IRRATIONAL AND IRRELEVANT to the reality and fact that my body works better and feels better and is much healthier in this weight range.
If you find you are really hungry on a low carb diet, and you aren't overweight, it probably means your body doesn't want you thinner and you are complaining and fretting over a weight problem that no one cares about.
You are welcome to starve yourself like many other orthorexic lunatics out there so as to get your body type emaciated and your weight deficient, as I did for several years. I don't suggest it, it makes you crazy sometimes.
You have a little mental image in your head of what you should weigh and look like that has no relationship to reality.
I don't know how old you are or your history of weight issues but generally it is treu that as men and women age, go through menopause and andropause and growth hormone insufficiency, they start to become flabby and don't have that toned fit appearance they did at 20 years old when all their hormones were working on deck. This is called getting old and it is normal.
You can try to starve yourself to pretend to be young again, catering to a delusional self concept and goal seeking... or you can just learn to ignore your emotional brain that tells you you should be x weight and learn to like your body which is otherwise healthy and normal at the size you are now.
Your choice.
But either way, this has nothing to do with like, obesity and pathological fat gain, which is what low carb diets are designed to treat.

Well 5 lbs was the closest I got to my goal, but I'm not there right now. I'm now like 15 lbs away from my goal weight. Sorry that I have high expectations for myself. As someone who competes in sports, the less weight I have to carry the better. So you should be able to see why I'm unhappy getting stuck where I am.

If you compete in sports than you may be expected to restrict food calories to whittle your body down to benefit your sport.
But like I said, you are comparing an elective life choice (to be thin/to compete in a sport) to a discussion of endocrine diseases and pathological fat gain.
Your situation which is within the realm of normal body composition and health has nothing to do with morbidly obese people and diabetics, which is what low carb diets are for. You do not have a weight problem.

This is all news to me. I didn't know only morbidly obese and diabetics are concerned with losing weight.
But whatever I think you're just bitter that I rained on your parade. Its okay I'll let you have your blog back now.

No. It's more like, complaining that a drug to treat an illness doesn't work when you don't even have the problem the drug targets.
Like, someone who's down because of their life situation being pissed off that lithium therapy isn't working.
Not only is this person healthy but they irrationally expect a medical treatment to benefit them for some reason.

@v/vmary: "... overweight people with perfectly normal fasting insulin levels."
this seems to be the case with my sister. she is morbidly obese, but her fasting insulin is around 83. i told her to test after meals, though, to be sure, cuz my fasting is 90 but shoots way up after a high carb meal to dangerous levels"
Not sure if there is some confusion here but I am not aware of any way to easily test insulin levels at least at home. I suspect you mean that your sister's Blood Glucose (BG) is around 83 mg/dl fasting?

From my point of view it would in fact be incredibly useful to be able to easily test insulin levels at home... BG is easily done but not 100% accurate and can serve as a surrogate because higher BG generally also means higher insulin (if your pancreas is still able to make enough).

With a person who is carrying excess fat mass and likely insulin resistant: although the fasting BG may be normal and even post meal BGs may be OK, it might be requiring much higher levels of insulin to achieve this than in an healthy person. Over time (I am convinced) this may lead to burn-out of the pancreatic beta cells (where insulin is secreted) and finally the outward signs of Type 2 Diabetes. I have read estimates of between 50-80% reduction in beta cell capacity at time of diagnosis... I wonder how much of this failure was accounted for in any studies which measured insulin levels?
This is why I think Type 2 is relevant to the general population because I see a great many who are not yet diagnosed with Type 2 but are heading down that path.
By taking action early, a person can avoid this path... slowing down, stopping or even reversing the progression to full-blown Type 2 or related Metabolic Disorders.

Frank said: "Not sure if there is some confusion here but I am not aware of any way to easily test insulin levels at least at home. I suspect you mean that your sister's Blood Glucose (BG) is around 83 mg/dl fasting?"
I believe you are correct, Frank, those have to be BG levels (Insulin units are typically mLU/mL or pmol/L). The reason it's so low is likely because of a high baseline insulin (hyperinsulinemia) keeping it this low. Rosedale sees this all the time with his patients and explains, if I recall correctly, that he isn't all that interested in baseline BG levels as much as insulin levels because of this reason.

Aha! Finally the aetiology of Dave's imaginary weight problem is revealed: sport. Ironically, the LC diet is working for him as it should. It stabilised his weight at a normal level and now his brain is like "i'm making you hungry because you keep trying to lose more vanity pounds which i don't want you to lose because it's dangerous to your health, ya dummy"
Competitive sport is a cauldron of eating disorders. I know an elite-level rower. She is NUTS. Like Dave, this woman believes that her "struggle" to get from 59 kg to 57 kg at 5'10 for some imaginary arbitrary sport-related reason is analogous to my struggle with actual obesity. The first requires starvation, the latter merely a LC diet. These situations are in no way comparable.
Woo, you nailed it on the head with the lithium analogy. I see a lot of borderlines and bored fat unhappy housewives who are pissed off that medications "didn't work" for them. They obsess about their psychiatrists with the same passion as Dave here talkes about Gary Taubes. Guess what? Bored housewifery can't be treated with antidepressants any more than a LC diet can drop imaginary pounds from a normal BMI person. On the other hand, LC can strip fat off most obese people with relative ease because it's an actual illness that's responding to the appropriate therapy. If you present with moderate or severe endogenous depression, chances are you will get better with medication. If you present with mood swings, irritability, and unhappiness about your life, chances are you will stay that way forever.
I blame our narcissistic self-absorbed culture where everyone is self-diagnosing with imaginary conditions when their "symptoms" vaguely resemble a real condition. Entire industries have sprung up to cater for our hypochondriasis. Hence every nerd now thinks he (and especially she) is "an aspie" and every hysterical hypercritical mother thinks her male child who doesn't like sitting quietly for hours at a time has ADHD. This is also why we have a young man here obsessing about a diet guru and fighting formerly obese people who followed said guru's diet recommendations and sent their disease into remission.
Dave would be well served to step away from the keyboard, get some fresh air and gain some perspective.

@Adam I appreciate what you have to say, but you are dead wrong if you think that I am a beliver of "causal CICO".
Its already disproven that obesity is a "disorder of fat accumulation" as Taubes likes to put it simply because the composition of the diet does not dictate whether energy is stored or burned at the end of the day which is a HUGE part of Taubes hypothesis.
I am skeptical of IH for good reason. We know that when people get fat they are eating way more calories than their lean counterparts. This is FACT. What is also fact is the people who are fat and claim otherwise are simply delusional because studies prove this and prove that people are too bias to accurately report their own intake.
Now the unanswered question is WHY WHY WHY do they eat too many calories? And I see no reason to believe that insulin is any more responsible than another other factors. From there are two different mindsets on which is the primary reasons:
1) its behavorial (gluttony / sloth)
2) its physiological (leptin, gut flora, insulin, food reward)
So you see, pinning everyone who doesn't agree with IH as "Causal CICO" is just wrong. We don't need insulin to have fat accumulation, we simply need to be hungry all the time.
Obesity is not a disorder of excess fat accumulation, it is a disorder of excess hunger.

@Dave: "Its already disproven that obesity is a "disorder of fat accumulation" ... simply because the composition of the diet does not dictate whether energy is stored or burned at the end of the day ..."
What proof, where? Cite your sources! Put up or shut-up!
Are you once again referring to your rock-solid Colpo-bible-cited Metabolic Ward studies?
I note that you have yet to respond to my suggestions about how they work and what little conclusion we can draw from them... other than to agree that the laws of physics still stand.
You can't just keep using the same "evidence" as the final word in a discussion when there is still controversy, debate and disagreement about the validity of that evidence... you might be convinced (or at least you've let other bloggers tell you what to think) but there are many -- including hard-working, professional, qualified Doctors and researchers (some who even get to deal with real humans instead of rats!) -- who disagree with Colpo's conclusions.. ergo, and as with many things of a scientific nature, the matter is NOT settled!
No matter how many times you repeat that it is so, does not make it true.

@Dave (again!) "We know that when people get fat they are eating way more calories than their lean counterparts. This is FACT. What is also fact is the people who are fat and claim otherwise are simply delusional because studies prove this and prove that people are too bias to accurately report their own intake.
Now the unanswered question is WHY WHY WHY do they eat too many calories? "
So I assume you include yourself in this damning of "fat" people?
Why do YOU overeat Dave?
Oh right.. let's ignore the parsimonious idea of insulin ('cos bloggers with an axe to grind tell us it's disproven... without actually providing any "disproof")... and let's leap straight to magical gut flora... even though you don't really understand that either but at least its something different right? :-0
Have you any idea how each time you post you are simply underlining your own ignorance in these matters Dave? But keep it up... I haven't laughed this much in years!

@Dave (yet again!!): You STILL seem confused Dave "...There's no reason to believe that different macro-nurients that are metabolized completely differently wouldn't yield different total body energy expenditure."
Please explain how you reconcile this statement with your "...the composition of the diet does not dictate whether energy is stored or burned at the end of the day..."
Maybe you could address the question this time and not be a baby bleating about partial quotes and distract with accusations of "cherry-picking"... I have quoted the pertinent statements which YOU made... these are YOUR words and they conflict.
For anyone who wants more, ALL your drivel is printed big and bold for anyone bored enough to go back and read it again ;-)

@Frank, its obvious to me you have not done your own research and have simply appealed to authorities who have told you what you want to hear.
And once again you have taken my statements about energy expenditure completely out of context. You have chosen FOR THE SECOND TIME to cherry-pick select statements in order to create a bogus context to make me look bad. I'm not going to clarify myself again because you obviously ignored it the first time. Do me a favor and re-read what I wrote and you'll get your answer.

@Dave: (good lord!)
You made the statement (a complete self-standing sentence "There's no reason to believe that different macro-nurients that are metabolized completely differently wouldn't yield different total body energy expenditure"
You then went on to suggest that this may be only theoretical but as I pointed out with an actual cited source, there has been recent proof that indeed different macro-nutrient ratios do in fact result in different energy expenditure.
So now you are just trying to weasel out of your own dissonance.
What a jacka$$
You have no proof, you have no substance and what you assert does not even stand up to the most superficial scrutiny.
Get you own story straight and then maybe we can have an adult discussion. Meantime you are just wasting everybody's time here.

@FrankG,
No dissonance here.
Within the context of PHYSICS a metabolic advantage is conceivable <-- is the true meaning of my quote that you keep bashing me over. However it has not been observed to any meaningful extent in the two dozen or so metabolic ward studies. So I can either believe those studies, or I can believe the one fluke study that says differently. Until someone can reproduce these results, I'll stick to the bulk of the ward studies.
Nice try, but this is a classic example of cherry-picking a single study and writing off all the others that do not support the same conclusions.

@Dave: do you really think I am suggesting that the metabolic advantage is some kind of magic trick that breaks the first law of thermodynamics?
Clearly you have a reading comprehension problem. I have already explained how this all works above... The low carb participants in this study were simply burning more energy at rest than then others BUT over time CI and CO were still the same.. you idiot! This is basic stuff... so if you can't even grasp it I think you need to try something less cerebral like sports!

...and maybe you need to look up a few of the terms you seem to like parroting. Citing even a single contrary study is NOT cherry picking... you might start by looking up the concept of Karl Popper's Black Swan.
Science is not supposed to be about consensus -- did Galileo have consensus about the Sun being the centre of out solar system? If consensus was the way of science, the Earth would still be the centre of the Universe! Was he dismissed as a single fluke study? Did that make him any less right?
Meantime you have consistently sidestepped and distracted from answering ANY direct questions or citing ANY of your sources.. even when pressed earlier you offered a smattering of abstracts that were NOT even related to the position you were taking -- although you keep contradicting yourself so often it is hard to keep track f what your position even is!
You need NO help from me to make yourself look bad Dave.

Here is a useful primer on Thermodynamics in real life for you Dave... please read it if you want to have any meaningful discussion here going forward...
http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.ca/2008/10/first-law-of-thermodynamics-in-real.html
The biggest issue I see with CICO as a concept is that: is it grossly oversimplified... our energy balance includes a great deal more than simply how many calories we put in our mouths and how many we burn in physical activity. Plus this ignores completely that we don't just eat to provide our bodies with energy (measured in calories or kCal) -- nourishment means a great deal more thane simply energy.
BUT simply looking at energy balance you might consider for the "In" side: both what we put in our mouths AND how much is freed up from internal stores (Fat-mass, Glycogen/Glucose and Protein/Lean-mass),
Then on the "Out" side: we have of course physical muscle activity + heat generation + fidgeting + digestion + stored energy (Fat-mass, Glycogen/Glucose, Protein/Lean-mass) + Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) + energy wasted in breath, urine and faeces. etc...
As you can see it is already a longer and more complex list than CICO implies AND what I have listed is STILL a gross oversimplification!
This is precisely why we cannot possibly manage our own energy balance with calorie counting... it is not possible.. no other animal on the planet does it... there are too many variables involved, most of which are outside of our conscious control. It requires innate, biochemical processes to control this for us... including feedback mechanisms (homeostasis) and hormones.
BUT if you put this "open" system into a "closed" Metabolic Ward and carefully measure and chart ALL of the above variables they will inevitably balance out!
They must!
THAT is the First Law of Thermodynamics in action!
That is the PHYSICS context that you threw about above!
So if the one fluke, cherry-picked study that I cited, had been done on a Metabolic Ward, the low carb group would STILL have been in energy balance! They have to be.. it is a physical law!
One simplistic explanation is that by burning around 300 calories per day (at rest) more that the other participants they might have been storing 300 calories less per day BUT it all still balances.. don't you see that?!?
I'd add that I don't think this energy balance necessarily happens on a meal to meal, or even a day to day basis but more likely we balances out over a week or several days... maybe longer in times of food scarcity or abundance during our prehistoric past.

Hi Frank et al,
Just posted an article that speaks to this conversation, if you're interested. Would love your thoughts!
http://www.caloriegate.com/carbs-insulin-hypothesis/magical-energy-gnomes-go-home

Sorry Frank but I'm not going to defend from this massive thermodynamics strawman you've just argued.
However I will point out to you why this is nothing more than a cherry-picked study until proven otherwise:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducibility
"Reproducibility also refers to the ability of an entire experiment or study to be reproduced, or by someone else working independently. It is one of the main principles of the scientific method"

@Dave: "...I'm not going to defend from this massive thermodynamics strawman you've just argued."
Because you can't. Period :-)
You don't want to accept the truth because the whole basis for your argument is that Taubes is trying to pull some magic trick that violates a physical law and thus you can shoot him down as a charlatan... in other words *you* are the one relying on straw men and your position collapses without them! As I said above it has no substance :-)
You've accused others of cherry-picking, straw men, appeals to authority.. did I miss one? But as I suggested above: I find it interesting that those who most often accuse others of these tactics are usually just pointing out what they themselves are doing.

Regarding Reproducibility...
Effects of Dietary Composition on Energy Expenditure During Weight-Loss Maintenance
Cara B. Ebbeling, PhD; Janis F. Swain, MS, RD; Henry A. Feldman, PhD; William W. Wong, PhD; David L. Hachey, PhD; Erica Garcia-Lago, BA; David S. Ludwig, MD, PhD
...was published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on June 27, 2012
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1199154
If you had any concept (any clue whatsoever might be a help!) you'd realise just how long it takes to set up, run and write up a study like this... when exactly between June of this year and now, do you see that happening?!? :-0

What truth am I not accepting BTW? When did I say Taubes violates a physical law? I thought my post clarifying my stance made it clear that a metabolic advantage is compatible with the laws of physics? But that doesn't mean it actually occurs in the real world in humans. If it does, we certainly have not figured out how to reproduce it yet, so we can't go claiming its something that occurs with any regularity on a LC diet.
The fact that you are only familiar with one metabolic ward study (only partial ward study BTW), shows me you haven't even looked at the rest of the studies to make a more informed opinion.

Once again... because you really are having trouble with this one Dave...
Metabolic Ward studies can ONLY show that humans do not violate the first law of thermodynamics. They do NOT show cause and effect. Period!

You have been trying to use Colpos's bible studies to prove that calories in are what cause weight gain. Despite my having pointed out that although "in" and "out" balance (they always will) that says nothing as to which is driving -- if indeed either is.
So now you tell me what is straw man about my thermodynamics discussion just above?

It is true that calories are a "proximal cause" of weight gain, however if you re-read the rest of my posts you will see I am a believer that the "root cause" of pathological weight gain is more likely physiological factors outside of a person's individual control that directly lead to over-consumption of calories. This is heavily in line with Gary Taubes except for two things...
1) I don't believe in metabolic advantage on LC diets
2) I don't cherry-pick data in order to pin it on the evil mastermind hormone known as insulin (anymore).

LOL "calories are a "proximal cause" of weight gain" you can ponce it up in as many weasel words as you like Dave but you're still just saying the same as I just did "You have been trying to use Colpo's bible studies to prove that calories in are what cause weight gain." I disagree!
Clearly not everyone here agrees with what you hold to be "true". And there are many here for who I have a great deal more respect and hold to an higher degree of integrity than I think I could ever expect from you (I don't trust a word you say).. so maybe you should takes Adam's advice fro earlier and STFU.. why not go somewhere where you will find folks who agree with you ;-)
You have nothing to offer here.. you chicken out by dismissing my well-thought out comment as a massive strawman without the least explanation and yet still expect me to continue a discussion with you. Get lost jacka$$

I know Woo et. al. like to rip on Guyenet, but he's one of the more open-minded researchers if you ask me. He had this to say about the same study you posted.
"The Ebbeling et al. study was the first credible suggestion that diet composition might be able to influence energy expenditure in a meaningful way under specific circumstances (i.e. weight maintenance after fat loss). I look forward to seeing that independently confirmed and then explored further, and as I said in my discussion of it, I suspect we'll eventually find multiple ways by which diet influences energy expenditure in humans (as we have in animal models).
"
And another quote that is line with LC thinking:
"I don't even know what people mean when they say "calories in, calories out" anymore. It's often used as a derogatory label without defining it. If it means the first law of thermodynamics appplies to humans, then yes it's correct. If it means energy balance is not physiologically regulated and is purely under the control of voluntary behaviors, then it's not correct."
In other words Guyenet does NOT think you are gluttons and slothes.

Frank,
Can't believe how selective you are in your reading comprehension. You only hear what you want to hear. You focus in on 'proximal cause' and completely ignore the 'root cause' part? What seriously?
I was on my way out the door but then you kept pushing and pushing. If you really don't want to debate, stop now.

Ahh, don't stop now, fellas. You're so close to pushing this thread to over 200 comments.
FrankG - I admire your patience. This dickhead who claims to be open minded clearly didn't come here to learn anything but to antagonise.

To counter idea of overeating as the cause of excess fat mass I offer (as discussed in the Junk Food Science link above) the Vermont Prison Study in which (literally) a captive audience of prisoner-volunteers, well-motivated by offers of early parole, were required to significantly overeat (and not exercise) in order to study the expected weight gain.
More recently a BBC Horizon TV documentary detailed a similar over-eating + non-exercising study with a group of volunteers -- Why Are Thin People Not Fat?
In both cases the weight gain did NOT occur as predicted by the simplistic CICO math and for several participants it seemed remarkably difficult for them to gain weight despite closely monitored overeating AND soon after the experiment, any excess fat mass easily went away, as they returned to their normal eating pattern.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPsKpnu0-X4

@FrankG, okay I'll bite...
its old news that some people are resistant to obesity. Since we are in agreement here, I will say that this study has no bearing on whether IH is true or not because it has to do with calories and not diet composition.
Seems like you are more interested in proving CICO wrong than proving IH right. But of course I don't believe in CICO so you're preaching to the choir.

Ahhh.. so despite what you said earlier, you are NOT staying that it is "over-consumption of calories" which drives weight gain? You concede that is has something to do with the macro-nutrient ratios? Then were are indeed in agreement on this point :-)
As to what you do or don't "believe"... I could give a rat$ a$$
What I present is based on the evidence at hand.. some of which you simply choose to ignore because it does not suit you... THAT is bad science

CICO as a simplistic way of restating the First Law of Thermodynamics is indeed *very* real.. to deny it is to deny a physical law! But as a practical intervention to assist in weight loss, it is totally useless. Funnily enough that seems to be the position which you keep presenting?
You seem to want to have it all ways Dave... is this still more cognitive dissonance on your part or just a ploy to allow you to always "win the internet!" LOL For example to assert both a "proximal" cause AND a "real" cause in the same run-on sentence.. which one is it Dave? You can't have both.

@FrankG
I'm convinced now that you're intentionally misrepresenting my views because you really can't argue against them. I am no longer going to respond to your straw men because its really not leading anywhere. First re-read all of my posts from start to finish, and then if you want to debate you can debate the things I've actually said. I will only respond to points made that directly challenge my views.

correction" make the comment about CICO as a weight loss intervention "worse than useless"
... oh and of course I still mean to say that applies to your comments also :-) 'cos seriously if you think you are making an impression on anyone here :-)

" I will only respond to points made that directly challenge my views."
...the evidence in the comments above section make a liar of you Dave... it is precisely the direct challenges which you have NOT responded to.

Dave
"I will only respond to points that directly challenge my views."
What a relief!
For some light relief: You have "ad nauseam" stated that you no longer accept various proposed mechanisms to account for your self-observation that
i) your eating is no longer satiating
and
ii) you have regained 10 lbs to be 15 lbs above your target weight.
Does this mean mean that the the volume (or weight) of your food increased as you ate to a changed appetite, and your fat mass has also increased ?
What is your explanation ?
If you have one, how have you use this explanation to get to your desired outcome weight ?
You can always use ephedrine, but beware:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2205700/Ephedrine-Michelle-thought-diet-pills-safe-shes-got-just-10-years-live.html
Slainte

@leon since you have brought something new to the discussion, i'll try to answer for you.
I've always had doubts about the science behind LC and how there were too many unexplained observations, but I was seeing good results for a while so I adamantly defended it using poor logic and cherry-picked studies, something I feel I've since learned from as I've better come to understand how science works.
Anyways yes my appetite has increased and I do eat more food, even while eating low carb foods.
So I feel like I've adapted to it in one way or another and so I'm back to square one where I don't have a clear solution to meet my weight goal, as calorie restriction I know will certainly get me there, but I'll be hungry all the time.

Dave
You have articulated a most important phrase - "adapted to it in one way or another".
You must be aware that upregulation of the ketone pathway takes approximately 3 weeks, that changes in HbA1c takes up to 3 months to appear, that upregulation of VO2 max takes weeks or even months.
I suggest that you change from LC/HF to a HC/LF and let yourself adapt to that.
Hormesis rules in sports' physiology. (I myself verified that 4 weeks at 3,000 meters upregulated my red blood corpuscles sufficient to induce a drop of 10 bpm on my Heart Beat Monitor for each section of my regular run, for the same times.)
As you do not accept the IH, then you should have no fears that prandial and post prandial insulin excursions may damage you.
Should you need a little confirmation that your CHO/insulin response is not unhealthy, buy a BG meter, and perform an OGTT. When I do one, I use 3 strips per reading, do it at 15 minute intervals for 1st hour, thereafter at 30 minute intervals. There is plenty of web information in how to interpret results. No doubt Jenny Ruhl, Frank Mendoza or even FrankG(!!) would provide you with websites.
It is unproductive arguing about hypothesised theories about the triggering of IR or obesity and trying to apply to a healthy physiology. You are your own work-in-progess and you have empirically to find the facts of your own physiology.
Slainte